Using DebateFlow
After the Round
When you press Complete Round, a short wait begins before the decision wizard is ready. This page explains what is happening in it, what each step produces, and what to do if it stalls. None of it picks a winner.
What happens when you press Complete Round
Your round is saved first - transcript, notes, reactions, everything you recorded - and then the analysis is handed to the server to run. It runs there, not in your browser, which means you can close the tab, lock your phone, or walk to the ballot table and it will finish anyway.
You are sent on to the decision screen while it works. You do not have to sit and watch.
The first thing that happens, before any analysis, is that student and school names are checked against the round's tokens and brought up to date. Nothing leaves for a model until every name in the round has a token standing in for it. If a name cannot be hidden, the run stops there rather than sending it. See Privacy & Security for how that works.
The four steps
You will see these four named on screen, with a tick as each one finishes.
1. Tracking the flow (about 30 seconds) Following each argument from the constructives through the final focus. This is the step that produces the flow sheet: every argument one side made, and what happened to it in each later speech - answered, defended, extended with new reasoning, named in passing, or abandoned.
2. Finding drops (about 30 seconds) Checking which arguments each team stopped extending or never answered. A drop is an argument nobody on the other side ever engaged, or one a team quietly stopped making. This step looks at the whole round at once, which is the only way to see a drop - you cannot tell an argument was dropped until the last speech that could have carried it has ended.
3. Laying out the voting issues (about 30 seconds) Pairing each argument with the responses it actually received. This is what turns two lists of arguments into the voting issues the wizard offers you - you tick the few the round came down to, and get one screen per argument you ticked. In Public Forum this step starts running at the same time as the first two, because it does not need their results, which is why the whole thing takes about two minutes rather than three.
4. Preparing your review (about 45 seconds) Laying out the voting issues and the weighing for you to decide on. This is the step that forms the app's own read of each issue - the one that stays hidden behind Compare with the analysis until you have made your own call and written your reason.
Altogether, expect a couple of minutes. It will not be instant, and it is not meant to be: these are separate passes over your transcript, and each one is asking a different question.
You can start before it finishes
The voting issues are ready at the end of step 3, before the last step runs. If the wizard has your issues laid out, you can start deciding them - the app's read of each issue simply arrives while you work, and it was hidden until you committed to your own call anyway.
Nothing here picks a winner
No step in this pipeline writes a winner, and none of them can. The only thing that records an outcome for the round is your submission at the end of the decision wizard.
What these steps produce is a description of what was said: which arguments were made, which went unanswered, which were carried to the end, and where the clash actually was. The fourth step adds an opinion about each issue, and that opinion is kept from you until you have formed your own.
If a step is skipped
Steps can be skipped without taking the rest down with them.
- No arguments were extracted from the constructives - usually a round joined late, or speeches that were not recorded. Step 1 is skipped and the rest still run.
- No transcript at all - step 2 has nothing to read, and is skipped.
- Voting issues could not be laid out - step 3 is treated as non-fatal on purpose. The wizard falls back to one issue per argument, so you are never left unable to decide.
A skipped step is not an error. It means the round did not contain what that step needed. You will still get a wizard, and you will still get a ballot.
If it fails or stalls
If a step fails, the wizard tells you what went wrong and offers a Generate analysis button. Pressing it re-runs the analysis. Every step is safe to re-run - re-running overwrites its own results rather than duplicating them - so there is no harm in trying once more.
If it stalls, the wizard watches for about six minutes and then says the analysis is taking longer than expected, and suggests refreshing or deciding without it. Refreshing the page is worth doing first: sometimes the work finished and the page stopped listening.
If it never runs, you can start it by hand from the same button.
And if none of that works, you can decide without it. The wizard falls back to a single overall issue and asks you to decide from your notes and what you remember: which arguments did each side carry to the end, and did anyone explain why theirs mattered more? That is how rounds were judged before any of this existed, and it is a complete decision.
Your recording is not at risk
The analysis is separate from what you recorded. A failed or stalled step cannot damage your transcript, your notes, your reactions, or the arguments you flagged after each speech - those were saved before the analysis started, and nothing in these four steps rewrites them. The worst case is that you decide without the analysis, not that you lose the round.
What's next?
- Voting Issues - what the third step produces, and how you decide on it
- Making Your Decision - the wizard end to end
- Speaker Points - the last step of the wizard
- Generating Feedback - what you write once the decision is made
- Troubleshooting - microphone, transcription and performance problems