[msla]

Nothing is solved by high school debate. Nothing. Ever. The only point it has is teaching kids how to debate, which is negated by giving the kids instant-win buttons in the form of Correct Opinions they can spout to adoring judges.

[kalkin]

Good thing nobody gets an instant-win button! (That would actually kill the activity which is why even this rather poorly-argued article doesn't claim it's happening.)

[nvm0n1]

It doesn't? It says judges openly advertise things like "I will no longer evaluate and thus never vote for rightest capitalist-imperialist" along with many other positions. It also says they routinely award wins simply because they happen to like a particular "K", all this sounds a lot like a collection of instant win buttons.

[kalkin]

The article says a lot of things, some of which are even true. Debate judges are volunteers and there are tens or hundreds of thousands of people who've done it. I don't doubt there are judges who make bad decisions, but that ideological quote, if it's real, is definitely not representative of how debate is actually judged in most or prestigious tournaments.

(Also, even that isn't an instant-win button! Any decent debater can spin an actually-you're-the-imperialist argument in almost any circumstances, and sadly paying attention to judge biases is also routine. And FWIW at something like a state championship tournament there are a lot more normie judges who won't vote for a K, no matter how well argued, than there are Maoists.)