Overall Quality

[GlobalLlama]

Do you think the overall quality of speech and debate has gone up or down over the years?

This is probably best to look at on a category-category basis.

I think some have gotten much better, but I don't know if they all have.

I think extemp is certainly of a higher calibur now. From what I've heard about and seen (old tapes), extempers today use many more sources (and better ones as well). Plus, rate today is much better than past years, when people generally used much slower styles to avoid fluency goofs.

Meanwhile, my debate friends tell me that LD is getting worse. They say it is evolving into a second policy. Not to hold anything against policy, but the values at stake here often get lost in the now numerous evidences and swifter reading.

What do you think about your/any category?

[Chewie]

As someone who's been around you guys for 7 years now...it's hard to say. :P I really don't know. I would like to think the quality of interp has improved over the past few years, but I can't really say one way or the other.

[justine]

I think the quality of speech will always be improving and worsening, and that you can''t look at one year and say that speech is definitely improving, because who knows, next year you might look back and say, "Geez, speech this year really sucks." Speech is speech, and while I'd love it if speech was definitely improving, I think it's just too variable thing to tell.