Menick is reaching a flawed conclusion, in my opinion, not because his reasoning is unsound — try not to faint of shock — but because his underlying assumptions are.
Assumption #1: My pref sheet is based on paradigms.
Hah, as if. The nether regions of the pref sheet are sometimes based on a reading, or the mere existence, of a paradigm. The meat of the pref sheet, however, is based on first hand experience with judges. We keep a written log of our RFDs in our team Dropbox; I read those regularly to adjust our pref sheets, because that’s actual data, and not just random assertions and opinions like the paradigm represents. I’ve never read the paradigms of our top judges; I rely instead on being in the room when they say “I vote on theory” and ignore their assertion that they never will.
As such I find judges, the ones I prefer anyway, rather predictable. When my debaters lose a round, they get an L; when they win one, they get a W, and we can talk about how to make the former turn into the latter. 99 times out of 100 I can figure out why they lost a given judge and most of those times, it’s because they ignored something I told them to do beforehand. The other 1 time, the pref sheet probably changes. My pref sheet isn’t about converting Ls into Ws; it’s about winning when we do win the debate, and being able to coach beforehand.
Remember, señor Menick, that the folks you’re hearing from are those coming into tab suggesting that you find them a better panel, as if you hadn’t already thought to try. It takes someone rather unfamiliar with the way things work to imagine that tab rooms put out horrendous panels and withhold good ones until asked. In short, you’re hearing only from people who don’t know what they’re doing, and drawing general conclusions from that data. Talk about your flimsy evidence.
Assumption #2: Good pref sheets can win all the rounds!!!
A good chunk of rounds are yours no matter the panel; a good chunk of rounds likewise are impossible to win. If you’re a senior with ten bids against a sophomore with ten cards, you’re going to win unless you do something tragic, even in front of a 1-5 judge. The pref sheet isn’t about that; it’s about helping you in the marginal debates. Which debates are marginal depends on what your level is; a younger team should have different prefs than an older.
Assumption #3: The W/L is the only concern of the pref sheet
This assumption is the most important of the set. The number I hang on a judge isn’t entirely about the likelihood they’ll vote for us. It’s just as much informed by the type of debate that judge would like to hear. If you don’t like debating theory, then you de-pref the theoriest of the theory judges, even if one or two of them is likely to vote for you anyway. The aim here is not to win rounds you would have lost otherwise, but to have debates you find enjoyable and are prepared for.
NStar was a mighty LARPer, and was most at home with DAs and CPs and such. If some framework-happy sophomore in her first varsity tournament came along, and hit him round 2 in front of a 1-2 judge in her favor, a judge who positively loves philosophical framework debate, she’d still be toast. But she could argue the kind of debate she wanted, and he could not, despite being better at it. So even with the W, a harm is caused. It’s sometimes an unavoidable harm, but it’s one the pref system is designed to minimize; and it’s one that blunt, imprecise tiers minimize less well.
Note that it is not a harm that NStar had to debate framework; it’s simply relatively unfair that one debater got to steer the debate into her own home turf and the other didn’t. A better outcome is a judge who likes yet a third style of debate, and so both debaters have to adapt equally. That is, after all, the idea behind mutuality, and an argument for the maximal mutuality possible.
At a wider level, too, I’ll pref differently for younger debaters. Some judges are not as good for us stylistically, but they’re great educators and can give excellent feedback. I won’t stake a junior or senior’s last bid round on being able to adapt to them in front of their favoritest debaters; but I might take the chance to get a good post-round for a student who is going to lose those rounds anyway.
Assumption #4: Team’s opinions don’t matter
Take away everything else, denounce it as the foul lies of a dirty Papist or what have you; and you’re still left with a final thought: the perception of fairness sometimes matters as much as the reality. If a rating is entirely about unfounded imprecise opinions — which I would assert might be true for some people’s pref sheets but isn’t of mine — those opinions still matter. A kid walking into a debate where she feels she has no shot to win because of the judge, likely will not, even if she actually had a decent shot after all.
There are a lot of reasons to de-prefer a judge; there’s the judge who might actually like your style a great deal but freaks out out, or the college freshman judge who you have a crush on and can’t string two words together in front of. There are a host of considerations that go into a pref sheet, and some of the are opaque to the tabber; if we’re going to have the tool at all, it may as well be as good as you can make it.
RFD
Finally, to steal a page from debate; there is no offense in the round for less precise categories. I’ve given a half dozen or so positive reasons for more precision; thus far all I’ve heard in reply is doubt whether the precision achieves a real effect. But without any affirmative reason to prefer blunter categories, who cares? Why is a tournament better for having 4 categories instead of 8 or 12 or 16? All I’ve heard argued is defense: doubt that the 8 category tournament is better than the 4 category one. There’s no argument on my flow of anything being harmed by having smaller, more numerous categories. Sure, an 8 tier system will have more 1-2 matchups, but if it makes you feel better, all those 1-2 matchups would be 1-1s in a 4 tier system; and there’ll be fewer of them on the pairing than there would be hiding underneath those 1-1s. Better for the debaters and the judges both; though perhaps worse for perfectionists tabbers. Speaking as a perfectionist tabber, surely my sensibilities are an unimportant factor here.
In absence of offense for the larger category pref sheet then, I’m sticking to, and advocating for, more of ’em.