The Evolution of Public Forum Debate Part 3: Technological Changes
Apr 9, 2025
Aahana Gupta | 6 min read
#1 -- The Wiki
While disclosure might seem to be a norm in Public Forum debate, that wasn’t always the case. In fact, the wiki didn’t even exist until the 2011-2012 season, and that was only for college debate. After it proved to be a successful way to share information and resources, the high school wiki for policy and LD as well as the Open Evidence Project were added in 2013, and the Public Forum wiki was added in 2017. At first, there were very few schools who used the wiki, and most teams only disclosed one or two rounds at most. However, use of the wiki has continued to grow exponentially, especially during and after the pandemic. Disclosing has become a norm amongst bigger debate programs, but smaller programs who don’t compete on the national circuit still generally don’t follow the practice of disclosing. Beyond disclosing on the wiki, disclosing speech docs with evidence has also become a common practice in each individual Public Forum round. Although some people raise concerns about the possibility of less experienced debaters with less resources getting prepped out by bigger programs, or getting kicked off of their teams for violating team policies that prohibit disclosure, most debaters and coaches agree that disclosure has been beneficial for the activity. Vivian Yellen, former debater at Bronx Science High School, outlines a few of these benefits, stating that “Disclosure is a great way to access new arguments and to have more clash in the debate space. I also think it’s great to check back against evidence ethics.” As the activity continues to grow and evolve, it seems as though the positive response to disclosure means that we will continue to see more and more teams disclosing, and we will see the wiki grow for years to come.
#2 -- Tabroom
Tabroom.com is a website which houses judge paradigms, tournament calendars, and competitor records. It also contains separate pages for each tournament, with all relevant tournament information (such as contact information, pairings, judge ballots, etc) kept in separate tabs on that page. Created by the NSDA, the website’s main purpose is “to provide a tournament management system to debate and speech tournaments worldwide, for as many formats of debate as possible.” Indeed, it does just that. Tabroom is used for virtually every debate tournament, from locals to the Tournament of Champions. However, this wasn’t always the case. Before technology, paper was used to tabulate tournaments. This was often chaotic and time-consuming. Calculations had to be done manually on paper, and there was always the risk of losing the sheets containing critical information. With the dawn of technology, different softwares were created to solve this issue. One of the earliest softwares used for the tabulation of debate tournaments was TRPC, run by a Professor at Baylor University. However, this software was desktop-based, and fell out of favor compared to other internet-based solutions, which were gaining popularity in the 2000s and early 2010s. These websites included SpeechWire or Joy of Tournaments, which were widely used prior to Tabroom’s acquisition by the NSDA. However, according to Dylan Morgan (who is an assistant coach at Theodore Roosevelt), Tabroom is a much more clear and efficient website. Most coaches and people who have used both websites seem to agree. Tabroom’s partnership with the NSDA allowed it to become more accessible to the whole debate community, and due to its intuitive nature, it took over as the main platform for debate tournament tabulation. While Tabroom certainly has its quirks (including its tendency to glitch or crash mid-tournament), it seems as though it will be here to stay.
#3 -- Computers
Almost every debater has heard stories about how tedious debate was before computers. Whether from a coach, judge, or former debater, they’ve heard about the hours spent lugging huge bins of prep from round to round, about the struggles of searching through paper files for literal, physical pieces of evidence. Luckily, this hasn’t been an issue since 2010, when the use of computers in Public Forum Debate was first allowed by the NSDA. However even during the early and even late 2010s, computers remained a rare sight during a debate round. According to Sophia Gustafson, coach at Iowa City West claimed that computers would really only be used for the case, and maybe the rebuttal speech. After that, computers would be shut and people would give paper speeches. Yellen agrees, stating that “Paper speeches were a lot more common.” She attributes the shift towards a more paperless and technological form of debating to the pandemic. “The idea of speech docs wasn’t really common until the COVID era. The big switch to speech docking in the use of technology came from the fact that when you were debating online, judges couldn’t tell whether you were using your flow or using the computer.” This meant that it was more strategic to read off of the speech doc, since you could reference your evidence and read what your partner was writing in real time, without having to break eye contact with the judge. While the advent of technology has led to better research, better evidence and more complex arguments, a host of problems have been created by the switch as well. Gustafson comments that “There’s a lot more docbotting…which I find to be pretty problematic. I think it’s important to not allow your partner to type out your speeches because it kind of gets rid of the idea that speaking on the fly has benefits.” She also notes that some persuasion gets lost, especially when there is an excess of evidence and arguments that debaters are now trying to cram into already short speech times. However, regardless of whether computers are impacting the activity in a good or bad way, it is clear that they are here to stay.
References:
https://opencaselist.com/history
https://www.tabroom.com/index/about.mhtml#:~:text=History,Disclaimer
https://www.speechanddebate.org/tabroom/
https://betterdebatemanual.wixsite.com/better/using-trpc
https://www.reddit.com/r/Debate/comments/111w3sk/what_tabbing_software_did_speech_debate/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Debate/comments/9vvtyo/speechwire_vs_tabroom/