The Debate Process

Table of contents

1. The Debate Workflow
2. The Organizer of the Debate
3. The Role of Adjudicators

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The Debate Workflow

A debate on debate.club moves through four stages:

Lobby >> Preparation >> Debate >> Evaluation

The platform creates the rooms for each stage, routes participants into them, and handles the video and state transitions. Participants and adjudicators can focus on the discussion itself.

The Organizer of the Debate

For an invite-only debate, whoever creates the debate becomes the Organizer. The Organizer invites the other participants, assigns each of them a role (including themselves), and starts the Preparation stage once the team is ready.

Once the Preparation stage begins, the Organizer takes on whatever role they assigned themselves (e.g. Prime Minister or Adjudicator). From that point on, the workflow is driven by the Adjudicators — including the Organizer if they assigned themselves the Adjudicator role.

For an Open Debate, the debate.club team is the Organizer but does not take part in the debate itself. Roles are assigned automatically from the sign-up order, and the workflow is driven by the adjudicators who signed up.

The Role of Adjudicators

Anyone assigned the Adjudicator role can perform the following actions during the debate:

1. In the Preparation stage:
   • Enter and leave team preparation rooms
   • Pause or resume the preparation timer
   • Start the Debate stage
2. In the Debate stage:
   • Start or stop the current speech
   • Pause or resume the speech timer while a speech is in progress
   • Select the next speaker
   • Open the Ballot drawer to score the current speaker as they go
   • Start the Evaluation stage
3. In the Evaluation stage:
   • Fill in and submit the Ballot for each debater
   • Enter the Adjudicator Room for a private discussion
   • Return to the Evaluation Room