A Defense of Open Source

With the growing use of wikis, debaters are sharing information more efficiently than ever. Most teams’ core positions – both aff and neg – are available online through easy to navigate, organized databases. For the most part, individuals post tags and citations, allowing opposing researchers to seek out the evidence themselves. However, this season has seen the introduction of open source practices, with the debate team at Wake Forest University posting the text of the evidence they read in debates online at http://deaconsource.wikispaces.com/

However, the practice is not yet widespread across high school or intercollegiate debate. Some seem reluctant to do away with the necessity for opposing researchers to seek out evidence, while others hope to preserve the competitive advantage that accompanies lesser scrutiny. To be sure, the availability of citations without evidence does force opposing researchers to do more work if they hope to scrutinize arguments or use the cards themselves. But, is this the type of work that our activity should encourage going forward? I don’t think so, and it seems to me that open source practices could contribute to the quality of debate in several ways.

First, open source debating encourages researchers to focus on innovation, strategy, and nuance. If you can spend less time mindlessly tracking down evidence through databases that you already know how to use, you can spend more time crafting new arguments and interrogating the details of your opponents’ positions. I’ve been around enough high quality researchers to know that good new arguments don’t run out, debaters just tend to stop looking. This type of work seems more engaging and rewarding than emphasizing tracking down cites.

Second, open source debating would encourage high quality arguments. Poor positions could be identified and dispensed with quickly since debaters could more quickly identify faults in evidence. More effort would need to be devoted to developing better arguments, so that work could remain useful in future debates. Evidence comparison would also likely improve since debaters could more readily focus on developing these claims before tournaments begin.

Third, open source debate would help smaller and emerging programs. Open source practices would enable more widespread access to a broader collection of core arguments. This could remove barriers to participation for programs that lack extensive backfiles and supporting researchers. Strong original research would still be rewarded, but fewer debates would hinge on resource disparities.

Fourth, open source practices provide a better mechanism for debate research to be relevant in other contexts. Research regarding the issues and concepts that come up in debates could more easily be utilized by academics and outside researchers if databases included the text of the evidence that is cited. While the availability of citations initiates this possibility, open source practices could drive it forward.

All of this is not to say that debaters should not track down citations. Generally, if you plan to read a card in debate, it’s better to track it down yourself than to rely on others’ work, so that you can understand the context and identify other useful claims in the article.  Also, tracking down the evidence read by your opponents can often be strategic since an article may contain claims that contradict other portions of the positions for which they are read. But, open source practices could enable this work to be directed to where it’s most relevant, since debaters could access the evidence that’s read in debate as a baseline.

I’m interested to hear what others think. Most of the critiques of open source debating I’ve encountered rely on a vague notion of “work” that seems to lack value. Why shouldn’t our work be directed to scrutinizing evidence and innovating new positions? What’s to hide?