speechdrop > email chain ? (best practices to minimize lag/delay)

[ermocito]

I think Speech Drop could handle the added traffic from NDTCEDA – it is widely used in HS where school filters prevent emails from outside the school’s system.

Speech Drop does not have the virus screening that gmail does. In the old flash drive days, viruses were a big problem. That said, I have never gotten a virus through speech drop (yet) despite using it in NFA-LD for about 10 years.

There is also a feature in tabroom that can be used which is comparable to speech drop and might be a fall back option if speech drop stops being free (which is hard to predict, but guessing someone else could set up a speech drop comparable option if needed).

Some other benefits (which could also be costs) from email threads – it is easier to find contact info for people if you were ever in the same debate, forwarding is really easy, and you get a long term copy (slowly filling up your account space). Speech Drop will auto-delete the files in a week or so (I don’t know the precise point, more than a day but not very long).

Perms include (1) switching to speech drop only when email is being slow, (2) using email chain to share the speech drop code, (3) attaching the speech drop downloads & judging docs after the speeches have ended (but using speech drop until the 2ar).

[bwkelley]

At first glance I was amenable. But after surveying some debaters who have used both, a couple major concerns were raised that I find overwhelmingly persuasive:
1) DebateDocs DA. Speechdrop is both over- and under-inclusive. You noted that it risks less control over who has access to the room, which is true, but it also threatens jeopardizes broader transparency and scouting.
2) Impermanence DA. As Ermo mentioned, if you fail to download and store it all externally, then after a week both your and their speeches are gone forever.

Secondarily,
3) Forwarding DA. This is much less impactful than those others, but there is some small annoyance and time cost to needing to download and share rather than simply forward the chain. Relatedly, searchability—but, again, not acute because an effective team file storage solution with standardized naming conventions solves.

[Truf]

One thing that often contributes to sending lag is when you press send before the document upload is complete. Waiting for the link on the file to turn blue before hitting send tends to make it go much faster.

More generally, attaching and sending speeches is something that I think teams should devote time outside of tournaments to specifically practicing and having a process for. Not saying this is true for Armands’ example, but 90% of email-related delays that I have anecdotally observed while judging are clearly attributable to debaters being unpracticed at efficiently using their email, or being unable to find where they saved their speech document.

Strongly agree w/ BK on his objections to speechdrop.

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