Tester tracking

Who in your judge pool has actually been watched, by whom, and in which position — worked out from the live draw rather than typed into a spreadsheet twice.

The problem it solves

By the end of the prelims you have to decide who chairs a break round. To do that honestly you need to know which judges somebody trusted has actually sat with — and in what position, because watching someone panel tells you much less than watching them chair.

Most adjudication cores track this in a spreadsheet, filled in from memory between rounds. It goes wrong in the same three ways every time: it drifts out of step with the draw, nobody updates it during the round when they are busy, and it records “tested” without recording as what.

This tool takes the position that none of that should be typed at all. A judge has been tested when one of your testers sat on their panel — and the tab already knows who sat on which panel. So it is derived, every time it refreshes, and it cannot disagree with the draw.

What you look at

12345

1. 1
   The four numbers that matter

   Never tested, seen but not chairing, seen chairing, and how many testers you have. This is the whole state of your pool in one line.

2. 2
   Who to test next

   Not a list of everybody — the remaining gaps, ordered so the top of the list is where a tester is worth spending.

3. 3
   Why each one is a gap

   “Chaired unwatched” means they have chaired real debates that nobody was in the room for. That is a different problem from never having been seen at all.

4. 4
   Tested as what

   Chair, panellist or trainee — the position the tested judge held, not the tester's.

5. 5
   A note against a name

   Free text, saved beside the tab and never written back to it.

The distinction the second and third pins are making is the point of the whole thing. “We have seen them” is not a single fact. A judge a tester has watched panel is a candidate for another panel; a judge who has been chairing all tournament with nobody in the room is an unanswered question, and quite a different one from a judge nobody has sat with at all.

12345

1. 1
   Seen chairing

   A tester was on this panel and this judge was the chair.

2. 2
   Trainee counts

   An early version only recognised chair and panellist, and so told judges nobody had sat with them when somebody had. Trainee is a real tested-as state.

3. 3
   A dot is not a dash

   A dot means they judged and no tester was there. A dash means they were not allocated. Collapsing those two loses the thing you are looking for.

4. 4
   Testers come from the tab

   Anyone flagged as adjudication core is a tester automatically, so this is right before you touch it.

5. 5
   …and you can add more

   If your testers are not all on the core. Stored beside the tab, never written into it.

How “tested” is decided

One sentence: a judge counts as tested in a round when at least one tester was on their panel in that round, and the recorded position is the one the tested judge held.

Two consequences worth knowing, because both have surprised people:

• Testers sitting with each other does not count. Two adjudication core members on a panel are not testing one another, so neither gets a mark.
• It is per round, not per tournament. A judge can be seen chairing in one round and panelling in another, and both are recorded; the summary uses the strongest position anybody has actually watched.

What else is in there

Four other tabs, all supporting material for the same decision:

Where it runs

On your laptop. ./start and open the address it prints. Nothing is published, nothing is shared, and it works on a hotel wifi that cannot reach much.

There is also a hosted version in tester-tracking/cloud/, for an adjudication core who want one shared view rather than one per laptop. It runs on Netlify functions and needs its own setup; start with the local one.

Next: the fold and the simulator →