Atlas / tournament documentation

Glossary

Debate and tab terms used in the tournament product, defined in plain words.

Debate and tab terms as the product uses them. Where a word has a wider meaning in debate generally, the definition here is the meaning on the tournament screens.

A

Term	Meaning
Accepted	The judge took their place from their judge page. Email and phone stay hidden until they do.
Active	The entry is on the roster, is paired, and appears at check-in.
Added by hand	An entry made by an admin on the Registrations view, with no cart. It is tagged and never counted as stuck.
Adjusted ranks	Ranks with the highest and lowest values dropped before summing
Adjusted speaker points	A speaker's total after the highest and lowest scores are dropped.
Adjusted speaks	Speaker points with the highest and lowest values dropped before summing
Admin	Organization role that creates and runs tournaments and edits the settings screens
Admin seat	A seat with full access to the tournament. It does not manage seats
Advisory	A release check warning that does not refuse the release.
Aff	The affirmative side of a room.
Affiliation	The school or club an entry represents.
Affiliation list	The schools and clubs the tournament expects, saved in Setup. Entries outside it are marked Not on list and are not refused.
All winning records	A break rule that takes every active entry with more wins than losses
Allocator	The part of the product that proposes which judge sits in which room.
Announcement	A message from the tournament desk to one audience, sent in-app, by email or both and recorded in Records
Announcing	The full screen stage that reveals speaker awards one place at a time
Approval	An answer from the affirmative or negative side agreeing that an observer may watch
Audience	The group of people an announcement reaches
Audit trail	The log of manual decisions with who took them, when, and the reason written; entries are appended and never edited or deleted
Auto-allocate	The button that seats judges in every unreleased, undecided room.

B

Term	Meaning
Ballot	The judge's record of a room: winner, scores, reason for decision and comments.
Ballot export	One CSV with a row for each judge's decision in the tournament
Blank ballot	A printed ballot with names filled in and the result left empty
Blind copy	A way of addressing an email so recipients cannot see each other's addresses
Blocker	An unmet check that stops Finalize, listed with a link to the screen that fixes it
Blocking finding	A release check result that refuses the release.
Bracket	In a power-paired draw, the group of entries with the same number of wins.
Break	The set of entries that advance from preliminary rounds into elimination rounds
Break line	The heavy line in the standings table under the last entry inside the break
Break rule	The setting that sets the size of the break: Top 4, Top 8, Top 16 or All winning records
Bye	A round in which an entry is not paired and receives a win
Bypass the gates	A full admin vouches for an entry added by hand. Claim and policy count as satisfied and an unpaid fee is waived.

C

Term	Meaning
Cart	A registration a coach or competitor has begun and not finished. It sits in the stuck list until it becomes an entry.
Category	The league's own label for a kind of judge, such as alumni or community. A tournament names up to 8.
Category points	A scoring mode in which the judge scores each speaker in each category and the totals decide the rank.
Chair	The first judge on a panel.
Champion	The winner of an event's final
Check-in	A record that a competitor or judge is present. It does not seat anyone.
Claim link	The link in an invitation that lets the named person take their place. A competitor link expires in seven days.
Claimed	The invited person took their place. Until then the invitation counts in the pool but the person cannot be seated.
Clerk	A moot court helper seated in a room who never receives a ballot.
Closeout	The band under the log that holds Finalize and the two downloads
Closeout packet	One workbook of seven sheets handed to the organization: Summary, Standings, Ballots, Awards, Payments, Open issues and Records
Closeout, Finalize	Closing the tournament. Finalize refuses while an active entry is unpaid or not checked in, and while a judge lacks compliance.
Coin flip	A fixed pseudo random order from the entries' ids, used last so two entries never tie
Column mapping	The choice of what each spreadsheet column means, such as Participant name or Winner
Compliance report	A record filed on the Compliance screen about a script check, code of conduct or other issue
Compliance room	The room where a compliance matter is handled, typed on a report
Compliance seat	A read only seat that sees Records and compliance reports and changes nothing
Compliance statement	The statement a judge signs before being confirmed or seated. Tab can record that it was signed on paper.
Confidence	How sure the importer is of a suggestion: Certain, Likely, Unsure or None
Conflict	A reason a judge should not sit in certain rooms. Kinds are School, Team, Household and Adjudicator.
Correction	A change to a recorded ballot, saved with a required reason.

D

Term	Meaning
Daily limit	The most rounds a judge said they can judge in one day.
DebateXML	An open file format for exchanging debate tournament data between tab programs
Declared conflict	A school or entry that a judge must not sit with, recorded for the judge.
Delivered	The state of a recorded ballot that competitors can read.
Delivery log	The list of reminder emails with their statuses Queued, Sending, Sent, Failed and Not sent
Depth	The number of speaker places awarded: 3, 5 or 10
Display tier	The public page's name for a tier: supporting, major, presenting or title
Dispute	A competitor's private request that the tab desk review a recorded result.
Division	Varsity or Novice, each created as its own event inside one tournament
Double adjusted	The same drop applied with a fixed drop of two high and two low values
Draft	A judge's saved working copy of a ballot that is not yet submitted.
Draft posting	A printed posting that includes unreleased pairings and is marked not for posting
Draw	The method that decides who debates whom: power-paired, random draw, round robin, pods or by hand.
Drop high and low	Removing the N highest and N lowest values from a list; needs at least 2N plus 1 values to take effect
Dropped	The entry is out. It is never paired again, keeps completed results, and forfeits a released pairing that has no result.

E

Term	Meaning
Elimination round	A round after the break in which the loser of a room is out.
Enrollment	The record that makes an account an observer of a tournament
Entry	One competitor or one pair registered in an event. A pair shows as Name & Partner.
Entry code	A label such as NYU A made of a school code and an entry letter, used in place of names
Event	A division of competition inside a tournament, with its own name and short code

F

Term	Meaning
Final	The last elimination round of an event, with exactly one debate
Finalize	The action that marks a tournament Completed and locks its pairings, rounds, ballots and disputes
Finalize without a break	The finish for a tournament that ran preliminary rounds and no elimination round; records that no break was run
Fold seeding	Placing seeds so that 1 meets the lowest seed and the top two can meet only in the final
Forfeit	A result in which a side did not debate, so the other side wins and no scores are recorded.
Full admin	A platform admin, an organization owner or admin, or a person holding the Admin seat, and not holding a Tab seat on the tournament

G

Term	Meaning
Gate	The condition a walkthrough step says must hold before the work counts as complete
Gates	The claim and the policy signature that a cart entry passes. An entry added by hand has neither on file.
Group check-in	Checking in every competitor of one school who is still out, in one action.

H

Term	Meaning
Hard conflict	A conflict that closes rooms to the judge and, for school, team and household, makes the release check refuse a round that breaks it.
Head to head	The result between two entries that met each other
Household	A declared link between two people who live together, so they never sit in the same room.
Household conflict	A tie between a judge and a competitor or fellow judge who share a household.

I

Term	Meaning
Impact review	The summary shown before Finalize without a break, naming the rounds run against the rounds Setup plans
Import id	A number made when a file is analysed, so the same import cannot be committed twice
Import wizard	The three step tool that reads a spreadsheet, shows how each column and name was read, and writes only after the director commits
In progress dispute	A dispute a desk member has claimed.
Incident	A support request that is open, pending or acknowledged.
Invitation	The email and link that creates an account for a new address and opens the tournament console
Invite list	The addresses allowed to register themselves when the tournament is invited only.

J

Term	Meaning
Judge steps	Accept the place, acknowledge the compliance statement, complete orientation and be approved. A judge must finish all before being seated.
Judge-assigned rank	A ballot on which the judge ranks the speakers directly

L

Term	Meaning
Live round	The latest round that has a released pairing, or the latest round when none is released
Load	The number of rooms a judge is seated in across the tournament, compared with the judge's maximum rounds per day.
Locked	A bracket label meaning an elimination round has been paired, so seeds are fixed

M

Term	Meaning
Meridian JSON	A lossless export of the tournament in Meridian's own JSON format

N

Term	Meaning
Neg	The negative side of a room.
No-show	A side that did not appear. Recorded as a forfeit by that side.
Nomination	A request from a competitor or coach, made from a room page, that a judge who signed up be preferred for the nominator's rooms.
Nudge	A short message from the tab desk to a judge about a late ballot.

O

Term	Meaning
Observer	A person with an account who is enrolled to watch debates they are approved for, without taking part
Onboarding	The five step setup wizard an organization finishes before creating tournaments
Online room	A room that is a meeting link set by competitors.
Open ballot	A ballot that a seated judge has not yet submitted in the live round
Operations event	A record of a problem, such as a bug report, kept for the platform operators
Opponent win percentage	Opponents' wins divided by opponents' rounds debated
Opponent wins	The sum of the wins of every opponent an entry met
Organization	The league, school or program that owns tournaments
Orientation	The in person or video briefing a judge completes before being seated.
Outround	Another word for an elimination round
Outstanding	An entry that is not dropped and whose payment is not Paid, Refunded, Not due or Waived. Outstanding payments block closeout.
Overdue	A room that has waited 20 minutes or more with no draft.
Override	A change made by the tab room to a decision or an assignment after the fact; an audit action whose code contains the word override
Owner	Organization role that also adds and removes organization admins

P

Term	Meaning
Pacing	Live paced uses a fixed round schedule; Long form lets competitors schedule within each round's deadline
Pair entry	An entry in an event with two speakers per side. The desk offers Both here and Partner absent for it.
Pairing	One debate: two entries in a room, normally with a judge.
Panel	A room with two or more judges
Panel majority	A strict majority of all seats on a panel.
Paradigm	A judge's written statement of how they evaluate debates. It is public and shown to competitors before the round.
Partner absent	A check-in of a pair entry where only the named competitor is present. A paired entry in this state blocks release.
Patch notes	The list of releases on the Documentation page
Pending payment reminder	An email sent once to each active entry whose fee is unpaid, after the number of hours the director sets
Pending seat	A seat whose holder has not yet signed in for the first time
Placeholder	A word in braces or double braces, such as {round} or {{first_name}}, that the product replaces with a real value before sending
Placeholder address	A made up address given to an entry or judge added by hand, to which no mail is ever sent
Pod	A group of entries in a pod draw. Each entry meets one entry from every other pod.
Pods	A draw that splits the field into groups, where every pod faces every other before any repeats.
Points mode	Scoring in which each speaker gets a score in each category and ranks follow from the totals.
Points-derived rank	A ballot on which speakers are scored in categories and ranks follow from the totals
Policy agreement	The acknowledgment a competitor gives in the cart, or a judge gives on the judge page, recorded as a time stamp
Posting	The public list of a round's rooms, judges and competitors.
Power-paired	A draw that groups entries by wins, orders each group by speaker points and matches the top of a group against the bottom.
Prelim	A preliminary round, in which every entry debates. Also called a prelim.
Preliminary round	A round that every entry debates and that feeds the standings.
Preset	A starting choice of format, venue and pacing that fills the create form and seeds tab rules
Preview participant views	Links on the Overview that open the screens a competitor, judge or coach sees, while the administrator stays signed in
Promo code	A code that takes a discount off the entries it covers.
Promote	Move a waitlisted entry to active. The fee becomes due and the registrant is told.
Provisional	A bracket label meaning no elimination round has been paired and seeds still follow the table
Public page hub	The admin page of links that send each audience into the tournament's registration flows
Publish bracket	The switch that makes the public bracket page visible
Pull-up	A team moved from a lower bracket to fill an odd bracket.

Q

Term	Meaning
QR code	A printed pattern a phone reads to open a room's digital ballot
Quick-start walkthrough	The guided tour of the admin console in the order a tournament runs

R

Term	Meaning
Rank	The place a judge gives a side or speaker in a round, where lower is better.
Rank scale	The highest rank a judge may give.
Ranks	A judge's ordering of the competitors in a room, where 1 is best.
Re-seeding	Pairing each new elimination round by the winners' original prelim ranks rather than by bracket position
Ready	A judge who has finished the steps, has no blocking conflict and has days recorded.
Reason for decision	The written explanation a judge gives for the winner. Both teams read it.
Recommended fix	The one change the console proposes for a finding, with a reason.
Recorded	The state of a room whose decision is in.
Records	The screen holding the read-only audit trail of manual decisions and the closeout band
Release	Publishing a round's rooms to competitors, judges and the public page.
Release check	The check a round passes before it releases. A blocking finding refuses release and a warning does not.
Release gate	The panel on the Break tab that states what stands between the current round and the next bracket
Release, released	Publishing a round's pairings to competitors and judges. A released pairing is shown to the people in it.
Released	A pairing that competitors and judges can see
Reply-to	The address that replies to an email go to
Resolution type	The outcome of a dispute: corrected, upheld or dismissed.
Result of record	A ballot row for a single judge or a tab entry, taken from the pairing's result
RFD	Reason for decision: the judge's written explanation, which both teams read.
Roster	The list of entries in the tournament
Roster freeze	A one way switch that stops roster changes by non admin accounts and disables the desk's check-in buttons. Admins can still edit the roster.
Round	A scheduled set of pairings. Preliminary rounds come first, elimination rounds follow the break.
Round is out	The live round is in progress or has a released pairing.
Round robin	A draw in which every entry meets every other entry once before any entry meets another twice.

S

Term	Meaning
Scope	One event, or the tournament as a whole when no event is chosen
Scoring model	The rules for what a judge fills in: Category points or Judge-assigned rank.
Script check	A review of a competitor's prepared material before the round; one issue type for a compliance report
Search palette	The Ctrl K search box that finds tournaments, entries, judges and rooms by name
Seat	A named level of access to one tournament's admin console: Admin, Tab or Compliance
Seed	An entry's rank for the break or a bracket. The best seed meets the last seed.
Self check-in	A competitor, or a coach for their own entries, recording arrival without staff. Works only on online tournaments with the switch on and the roster open.
Settings only	Organization role that edits the profile, branding and billing and is turned away from tournament consoles
Short code	The brief upper case label for an event used in pairings and postings
Side balance	The rule that gives the affirmative to the entry that has had fewer affirmatives.
Slug	The organization's short address name, also called the Subdomain
Soft conflict	A conflict the allocator treats as a cost to avoid when it can.
Speaker award	A place awarded to one of the entries with the most total speaker points
Speaker awards	The top speakers of an event by total speaker points, to a saved depth of 3, 5 or 10
Speaker points	A score given to each speaker within the event's range.
Speaks	Speaker points: the scores judges give each side for the quality of speaking
Spectate request	A request by an observer to watch one released pairing, which needs approval from both sides
Spectating	A per round setting that opens a round's rooms to any signed in account
Sponsor application	A sponsor's request to support the tournament at a tier from Bronze to Platinum
Standings	The ranking of entries in an event from the ballots entered, recomputed on every page load
Start	Starting the clock on a released round.
Stripe Connect	The Stripe feature that routes registration fees to the organization
Stuck	A cart item with no registration, shown with the stage it stopped at: Awaiting claim, Policy not signed or Cart open.
Support request	A report raised about a room by a competitor, a judge or the tab desk.

T

Term	Meaning
Tab desk entry	A ballot entered by the tab room on a judge's behalf, from paper or a phone call.
Tab room	The group of staff who run pairings, ballots and results for the tournament
Tab seat	A seat that runs the tournament and is refused announcements, fees, refunds, promo codes and seat management
Tab workbook	The NCFCA style spreadsheet with a TeamData sheet and ten Round sheets
Tiebreak	A rule that separates entries with equal records. The tiebreak order lists them, first line first.
Tiebreak order	The ordered list of tiebreaks; the first one on which two entries differ decides their order
Time proposal	A competitor's suggested time or room for a round, to approve or reject.

U

Term	Meaning
Un-release	Taking a round's postings down and withdrawing its notices.
Unresolved name	A name in a file that matched no entry well enough, which blocks the commit until it is resolved or skipped
Unseatable judge	A roster judge who lacks a step to being seated: acceptance, compliance, orientation or approval.

W

Term	Meaning
Waitlist	A queue for entries that arrive after the field is full. Entries are queued in arrival order.
Waitlisted	The entry is queued behind a full field. It is not paired and owes nothing until promoted.
Waived	A payment state: the fee is neither owed nor paid. Set only by bypassing the gates.
Walkover, forfeit	A win awarded to the opponent because the other side did not debate. A drop in a released undecided pairing causes one.
Webhook	A message the platform sends to an address the organization chose; tournament.finalized is sent when a tournament is finalized
Wing	Another judge on a panel.
Withdrawn	A judge removed from the roster for this tournament. Unreleased pairings are cleared and ballots already in are kept.