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Aberdeen IV

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Re:

Postby Mr Comedy on Sun Mar 11, 2007 8:50 pm

Quoting ChrisH from 20:14, 11th Mar 2007
How did "This House Believes That THIS is the chairperson's favourite motion" turn out? It sounds a BIT open...


Painfully that's how it went!


Hmm, that sounds like the worst motion I've ever heard of (apart from Cambridge IV, where they are all by definition, shit).
I bet that motion sounded like a really good idea at the time...

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"I am in no way interested in immortality, but only in the taste of tea. " -Lu Tung
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Re:

Postby TC on Sun Mar 11, 2007 9:17 pm

It was a bad motion. It gave first prop a massive advantage, which could have been taken to do anything. however if first prop ran something like the Iraq three state solution (like they did in the room Laura and myself and Miles where in) then we in first opp could give them a damn good bashing.

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Re:

Postby mattina on Mon Mar 12, 2007 8:24 am

Indeed, opp bashing was good fun with the way that motion was run- unless, like me, you were second prop.
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Re:

Postby Kizzy on Mon Mar 12, 2007 9:33 am

Quoting TC from 21:17, 11th Mar 2007
It was a bad motion. It gave first prop a massive advantage, which could have been taken to do anything. however if first prop ran something like the Iraq three state solution (like they did in the room Laura and myself and Miles where in) then we in first opp could give them a damn good bashing.

[hr]

Per Ardua ad Astra


I don't know that it's a bad motion per se. It's just an open one, and in that sense, given that the trend at the last couple of Durham opens competitions has been to avoid wholescale any reference to the words of the motion in the definition, or any link, tenuous or otherwise, to the motion, it's no more open than any other.

What I do think is more problematic, is having a competition of closed motions, with one open motion, as it's perceived to randomly disadvantage teams who find themselves in any position other than 1prop. In good rooms, debaters should simply deploy the skills they do when dealing with any open motion, will be dealing with a reasonable prop that should be both proppable and oppable, judges should judge with this in mind, and all will be well.

But in rooms where 'Assasinate Mugabe with the SAS' is the prop, problems do start to happen. One team in my room didn't know what an open motion is (although they found out soon enough) and novice speakers who aren't used to this sort of debate do struggle: it's at this point that I start to think the openness of the motion does have a stronger impact on the room, and that's not really fair.

So...as a motion, ok. In an open motions comp, fun. In a comp with closed motions, fine at the top of the tab, otherwise a bit mad.

Other thoughts?
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Re:

Postby Mr Comedy on Mon Mar 12, 2007 11:16 am

I'm not sure. The problem with open motions is that is always unfairly biases the 1st prop team. It also ruins the whole idea of prep time, as this team has time to prepare a motion whilst the other teams don't have a clue what will happen.

The real handicap is, as you have pointed out, is that you'll get insane debates in the lower rooms. Even so, in a good room presented with an open motion I'd normally come up with something that I have an almost watertight proposition case for (like legalising incest). This makes opposing this difficult, as with five minute speeches you have effectively 4 four minutes to compose your speech, assuming it takes first prop one minute to outline their motion, mechanism and problems with the status quo.

[hr]

"I am in no way interested in immortality, but only in the taste of tea. " -Lu Tung
"I am in no way interested in immortality, but only in the taste of tea. " -Lu Tung
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Re:

Postby Kizzy on Mon Mar 12, 2007 4:10 pm

You may have a point about the bias, Dave, but I'm not sure it's all that strong in the good rooms.
Open motions, I think, can be highly useful, particularly as a training tool: teaches 1opp to rebut whatever's thrown at them, and usefully for more advanced speakers, teaches them to make strategic calls, like determining an opp line, on their feet. All of this stands you in good stead when you're speaking further down the table.

I'm also not certain that they give a massive bias to 1prop - any judge worth their salt will bear in mind, when assessing the debate, that it's an open motion.
Also, unless you're very talented at getting all the prop material that exists in the debate into the case in the first two speeches, second prop (if the 1prop team is good) will have room present deep, clever analysis (as happened in my debate at the weekend), and have room to clash directly with 1opp (who tend by necessity to revert to mechanistic stuff and principled args) in a way that the second speaker on prop, by definition of having to get the majority of the material for the side in, simply hasn't time to do.

This can mean that 2prop get the credit for working with an unknown prop and making clever arguments. If they fail to do this, assuming that 1opp haven't gone completely mad, they leave a goodly portion of the opp line standing, and 1opp can beat them by bringing in big, uncontested arguments.

2nd opp in this case have the longest time in the debate to get a handle on what they need to do to win, and have the room to build on what's become important in the debate. If they do anything approaching a good job of this, then it's not so difficult to take the 1prop team out of the debate, create interesting clash with 2prop, and go for a bottom half debate. However, this is the case with any debate, so the openness of the motion doesn't really have such a strong influence here.

So yes, 1prop does have an advantage of time, but it's not like this outweighs everything else in the debate. They still have to beat the other teams in order to win. Factor in debaters prepping cases that haven't seen the light of day before the debate, which may under debate be less watertight than they originally thought (see Bob Nimmo's 'WHO rumour list' prop), and it tends to balance out. For what it's worth, on a quick glance over the books of doom that have the last 3 opens comps in, the rooms I've judged has a fairly even spread of 1prop/1opp wins, but seem to yield a surprisingly large number of 3rds for 1prop.

I think this applies most effectively when you're at an opens comp like Cambridge or Durham opens and can expect a fair spread of table positions, but that the potential bias that can exist (particularly in mid-tab rooms, where the spread of abilities can be vast) is exacerbated by having only one motion open at the competition.

This thread really is bringing out the inner geek in me!
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Re:

Postby Guest on Tue Mar 13, 2007 6:44 pm

I think the Top Room at Aberdeen is a good illustration of the unfair bias of open motions even in (and perhaps especially in good rooms). The Proposition side in our room was obviously very strong anyway and Jason and Jenny set up a really intelligent Prop which left Chris having to stand up and say "shit, blub, blub, blub, argh!", which effectively meant that a very good team was knocked out of the break when on a closed motion, they would perhaps have stood a greater chance of taking at least the third. Also, even though Jason and Jenny set up a really good prop,as you were saying Kizzy, there's often still enough left for second prop to extend well on what is already a good case (which Claire did brilliantly). On the other hand (and I'm not saying Jess and I would have ever taken more than the third regardless in that particular room!), if first Opp end up having to say "shit, blub, blub, blub, argh", even though 2nd Opp have had more time, they often can't dissociate themselves enough from having to follow some of the more crazy things first opp had to say which makes extending a lot more difficult, because you can't knife some of the less thought out ideas from the top of the table, and even the summation is disadvantaged because there isn't really a coherent opp line to summate and there's less clash as first opp didn't have time to come up with much/ anything to say. The problem with the open motion at Aberdeen is that whoever takes the fourth in the top room at that stage will probably be knocked out of the break, and in the top room where side prop will be very good, the first opp team (in this case Rach and Chris) are more unfairly disadvantaged than those in slightly worse rooms. In lower rooms (not the ultimate bin room featuring Mugabe assassinations with the SAS etc) first opp is actually less disadvantaged. No offence to Tom and Miles who were really brilliant all day (including taking lots of the material in our last round in their very good first prop and knocking Jess and I in second prop out of the break!) but opposing a weak prop on creating a three state solution in Iraq was much better than being in Chris and Rach's position in the top room having to be opposite a better prop side and opposing Jason (after only 5 minutes prep) on an obviously well thought out prop (because Jason is still amazing even though he didn't run bestiality, which would at least have been more entertaining to opp while we were all crashing and burning!):)Incidentally Jason, isn't this the Prop that you won at Newcastle on a speaker mark of 60 something?! Beth
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Re:

Postby TC on Tue Mar 13, 2007 7:07 pm

I think Beth hit the nail on the head there. Looking back on it I certainly am glad that we came up against the Iraq prop in our 1st opp as opposed to being right royally buggered (excuse the language) by Jason's super-prop, it enabled us to deploy all of the well worn Iraq arguements very quickly.

The motion was fundermentally biased in favour of very good teams. A team with excellent speakers on it, like Team Ice Cream, could think of the most prop-freindly and hardest motion they liked and run it. I am sure that if Racheal and Chris had been in that position they would have set up something devilishly difficult. All in all I think giving 1st prop licence to win in this fashion is a very bad idea and overly prejurdicial against the 1st opp.

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Re:

Postby Jason on Fri Mar 16, 2007 10:13 pm

Well personally I enjoyed it ( I would say that though) and at least it wasn't my export credit prop. I think I'm of the opinion about the issue of mixing closed and open. It can make the competition unbalanced but to be fair though on an open motion if 1st prop is bad it harms 2nd prop and helps 2nd opp, if its good 1st opp have a hard job but in most cases there is a descent line that they can take and judges should realise that and normally do.

It does bring up the point that we should do somework on how to 1st opp either opens, squirrels or just unexpected angles on motions. Won't that be fun for you all.

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