The below is not directed at you, but I felt your comment offered a good venue for it.
The reality is that a lot of people are making judgments while missing a lot of the picture - to be clear I am not on or related to the ISDA executive/the broader ISDA in any way, but I've heard enough to know that most of the conclusions being reached here are unfounded, made according to arbitrary standards/expectations, and really not productive. You simply cannot fairly assess the situation without access to information that, given the competition involves 11-year-olds, is probably rightly limited to the participant schools. If students, coaches or parents take issue with something (which I think they in some cases rightly can, such as the publication of tallies), they can raise those with their school, who can ventilate those issues with the organisation. That's far more likely to result in appropriate investigation/actually reach those who organise the competition than grandstanding on a forum.
At a minimum its obvious to me that those who are criticising adjudicator quality as if it isn't an inevitable consequence of the current form of the debating world (Easters had half as many participants as pre-covid Easters, most unis are barely able to field more than 2 teams for Australs) aren't really adding anything to the discussion. Sure it's fine to lament, but to what end? I don't think it's a productive message for the kids to receive, it isn't likely to help them grow as debaters, nor encourage them to work as adjudicators when they finish school. Obviously, everyone would prefer a better adj pool, but you can't magic away the consequences of covid.
Those criticising the topics this year really need to take a look at the topics in years past. Or advocate for topic selection. Or just accept the fact that two topics having a 13% team normalised swing is pretty common - look at the motion fairness stats from previous majors. I think most seasoned uni debaters would be happy to accept the senior a/b motion fairness stats at any comp.
Those annoyed that the results weren't published weekly should probably accept that, as per the admin's earlier post, multiple people have made contact about how they felt uncomfortable with the fact that - and manner in which - children's names were being discussed on here. I don't think that is going to push an organisation subject to child protection legislation to be more transparent/open.
I get that people care about high school debating, I do too. I think it's great this thread is as active as it has probably ever been since it was first started. But high school debating competitions are primarily dependent on the goodwill of underpaid high school teachers to organise them. They are not organs of the United Nations. Yet they still have constitutions and proper methods of ensuring accountability. I think that should be enough for people - the expectation that they should either be subject to uninformed criticism or ventilate their internal administrative decisions and affairs is, to me, absurd. Especially when I doubt people are actually forwarding their issues/complaints on to people who could change things. Maybe I've completely missed the mark here, I just think the tone of this thread has taken a particularly negative turn this year, and as someone who debated in, adjudicated, and coached teams in a range of competitions for nearly 15 years, I feel that people have forgotten both how things were and lost sight of what they can reasonably be expected to be. In fairness to everyone here, however, high school debating has always had a problem with appropriate boundaries, probably because people are so invested in it.
