Glossary#

Terms as CrabbyTab uses them in its pages and code. Most follow Tabbycat's meaning; where CrabbyTab differs, the entry says so. UI labels are in bold.

Adjudication core — the chief adjudicators. An adjudicator flagged Adjudication core is always a tester, can be listed publicly, and staff can be given the Adjudication Core permission group. See Participants and imports and Staff and roles.

Adjudicator score — the strength used to allocate adjudicators: the test score (or base score when there is none) blended with the weighted feedback average by the round's feedback weight. See Feedback.

AIDA rules — break rules of the Australasian Intervarsity Debating Association that limit how many teams per institution break (1996, 2016 Australs and 2016 Easters variants). See Breaks and eliminations.

Assistant — Tabbycat's name for tab-room helpers without full access. In CrabbyTab they are data-entry staff, managed on Admin → Assistants (page Tournament access). See Staff and roles.

Availability — whether a team, adjudicator or room takes part in a round. Anyone without an availability record counts as available (Tabbycat counts nobody until checked in). See Check-ins and availability.

Ballot / ballot version — a recorded result for one debate. Each save is a new version; the one confirmed, non-discarded version counts. See Ballots and results.

Ballot intake — the Results → Ballot intake board that tracks printed ballot sheets by barcode: Missing, Received, Entered, Awaiting check, Confirmed or Disputed. See Printing and display.

Base score — an adjudicator's rating before feedback (Base rating (1–10) in the adjudicator dialog). Changes are kept in the score history. Compare test score. See Feedback.

BP (British Parliamentary) — four teams per room in the positions Opening Government (OG), Opening Opposition (OO), Closing Government (CG) and Closing Opposition (CO). Teams earn 3, 2, 1 or 0 points by rank. See Tournament setup and formats.

Bracket — in a power-paired round, the teams on the same score of the first team-standings metric (wins in two-team formats, points in BP). See Rounds and draws.

Break — the teams that qualify for the elimination rounds of a break category, followed by its reserves. Generated on Results → Break. See Breaks and eliminations.

Break category — an independent break, such as Open, ESL or Novice, with its own size, reserves, priority and rule. A general category includes every team not marked ineligible. See Breaks and eliminations.

Bubble-up-bubble-down — an odd-bracket method that forms intermediate brackets and swaps a team with a neighbour when the pairing would clash. See Rounds and draws.

Bye — a team sits out a round because the field does not fill every room. Bye team results decides whether it counts as absent or as a full win; it never gives speaker scores. In a partial elimination, a top seed's bye means it advances without debating. See Rounds and draws.

Chair — the adjudicator who leads a panel. Chairs and voting panellists can submit ballots from their private URL. See Adjudicator allocation.

Check-in — marking a team, speaker, adjudicator or room present, by tick, barcode scan or self check-in. With Check-in expiry, old check-ins stop counting. See Check-ins and availability.

Cloud copy — the tournament stored in Firestore, shared by devices, private URLs, staff and the public site. Compare working copy. See Backups, restore and cloud sync.

Code name — a team's public alias. With a code-name mode on, public pages show code names only and real names never leave the server; the Code names page decodes them for the tab room. See Public pages and releases.

Composite team — a team whose speakers come from more than one institution. See Participants and imports.

Conflict — a reason an adjudicator must not judge a team or sit with another adjudicator: personal, institutional, or a team–institution conflict. Allocation avoids them through a large penalty and lists any that remain. Conflicts are never public. See Adjudicator allocation.

Consensus ballot — one result for the whole panel. Compare voting ballot. See Ballots and results.

Data-entry staff — signed-in staff whose permission groups decide what they can do (enter ballots, check people in, and so on). Tabbycat's assistants. See Staff and roles.

DebateXML — the XML archive format Tabbycat uses. CrabbyTab imports it as a new tournament and exports it. See Participants and imports.

Double entry — a second person checks every tab-room ballot before it counts, by Review or by Blind re-entry. See Ballots and results.

Draw — the pairing of teams into rooms and positions for a round. See Rounds and draws.

Draw check — the list of errors and warnings for a draw (clashes, missing rooms, side imbalance and so on). Releasing a draw with errors needs a recorded reason. See Rounds and draws.

Draw stage — where a round's draw is in its release: No draw, Draft, Confirmed, not released, Released to teams only and Released to public. The stored values are none, draft, locked, teams_released and confirmed (released is read as a synonym). See Rounds and draws.

Draw strength — a standings metric: the sum of a team's opponents' team points. Variants use opponents' wins, speaks or rank. See Standings and metrics.

Equity — a permission group for equity officers: see and edit conflicts. It cannot see participant contact details. See Staff and roles.

Feedback — ratings and answers about adjudicators from teams and other adjudicators, submitted on private URLs, public forms or entered by the tab room. See Feedback.

Feedback path — who may give feedback on whom (for example chair on panellists, teams on the chair). See Feedback.

Feedback weight — set per round on the Allocation page: how much the feedback average replaces an adjudicator's test or base score (0 to 1; new rounds default to 1). See Feedback.

Fold / slide / adjacent — pairing methods within a bracket of ten: fold 1 v 10, slide 1 v 6, adjacent 1 v 2. See Rounds and draws.

Forfeit — a two-team ballot option: the other team wins with 1 point, without speaker scores. See Ballots and results.

Ghost speech — see iron-person speech.

Global administrator — a site-wide administrator whose UID is in the server variable FIREBASE_ADMIN_UIDS. Only global administrators create tournaments. See Staff and roles.

Importance — a debate's priority for allocation, 0–10, set by hand or by Prioritise by bracket / Prioritise by liveness. Preformed panels also have an importance. See Adjudicator allocation.

Independent — a team or adjudicator with no institution (Independent / unaffiliated), so no institutional conflict applies. See Participants and imports.

Info slide — background text released before a round's motions. Motion release has three steps: Not released, Info slides, Motions. See Public pages and releases.

Intermediate bracket — a bracket formed between two brackets to absorb an odd team: the bottom team of the higher bracket meets the top team of the lower one. See Rounds and draws.

Iron-person speech — a speaker giving an extra speech when their team is short. The extra speech is marked Ghost on the ballot: it never counts in the speaker tab, and counts towards the team score only with Team score includes ghosts. See Ballots and results.

Live — the sync status of an administrator device whose ballots, debates, teams and adjudicators sync with the cloud copy record by record. See Backups, restore and cloud sync.

Liveness — per break category, whether a team is live, safe (certain to break) or dead (cannot break), from the completed rounds. Shown in standings, on the Draw and Allocation pages. See Adjudicator allocation.

Local only — a tournament that has never been uploaded: nothing leaves the device. See Backups, restore and cloud sync.

Motion veto — a team striking one of the round's motions. With Record motion vetoes, ballots record one veto per team; vetoes feed the motion statistics. See Ballots and results.

N teams per room — the format for rooms of any team count other than 2 or 4 (Tabbycat's teams in debate, used by its Public Speaking preset with 6). Positions are Team 1 … Team N; only random and manual draws. See Rounds and draws.

One-up-one-down — a conflict-avoidance method that swaps opponents between adjacent rooms to remove clashes. See Rounds and draws.

Panellist — an adjudicator on a panel other than the chair. Panellists vote on voting ballots and may submit their own sheet. See Adjudicator allocation.

Partial elimination — a first elimination round when the break size is not a full bracket: the top seeds get byes and the rest debate. See Breaks and eliminations.

Passcode — the secret that goes with a private URL. It is separate from the link and can be printed on slips. See Private URLs and portals.

Permission group — a named set of permissions given to data-entry staff, such as Tabulation assistant, Equity, Adjudication Core or a custom group. See Staff and roles.

Postponed debate — a debate marked as not yet held; it gets no room and its result can come later. See Ballots and results.

Power pairing — drawing teams against others on similar results: two-team rounds pair within brackets; BP rounds use Tabbycat's Hungarian assignment. Round 1 is drawn randomly. See Rounds and draws.

Precedence — the ordered list of metrics that ranks teams or speakers (for example points, then total speaks). See Standings and metrics.

Preallocated sides — two-team sides set on the Draw page before the draw. See Rounds and draws.

Preformed panel — a panel built before the draw and placed as a unit by its importance. See Adjudicator allocation.

Private URL — a participant's secret link (/{slug}/private/team/…, /adjudicator/… or /speaker/…), used with a passcode, that opens their portal: their draw, ballots, feedback and self check-in. No account is needed. See Private URLs and portals.

Public form — an optional ballot or feedback form on the public site for participants without private URLs, with an optional password. Its submissions are always unconfirmed. See Public pages and releases.

Public snapshot — the cleaned-up copy of released data that the server builds from the cloud copy when you publish. Public pages read only this. See Public pages and releases.

Pull-up — a team moved up from a lower bracket to fill an odd bracket. Pull-ups are recorded on the debate and counted by the Pull-ups metric. See Rounds and draws.

Release — making something visible to participants or the public: a draw stage, a round's results, team speaks, motions, or an item on the Public release panel. Releases upload and publish in one step. See Public pages and releases.

Republish — Republish public pages (account menu) rebuilds the public snapshot from the cloud copy. See Public pages and releases.

Reserve — a team listed after the breaking teams of a category (R1, R2, …); the Reserve size sets how many. See Breaks and eliminations.

Room constraints — hard requirements a room must meet (category, seats, accessible, online, near tab room) and soft room preferences for room categories with a priority (Tabbycat's venue constraints). See Venues and constraints.

Rules preset — a bundle of Tabbycat's settings for a named format (BP, Australs, WSDC, APDA, Public Speaking and others), applied when the tournament is created, or later to an existing tournament after a preview of every change. See Tournament setup and formats.

Self check-in — a participant checking themselves in from their private URL. See Check-ins and availability.

Self-split ballot — in a two-team voting round with one voting adjudicator, the adjudicator declares a 2:1 split. See Ballots and results.

Side names — what the two sides are called: Affirmative/Negative (default), Government/Opposition, Proposition/Opposition, Pro/Con, Appellant/Respondent, Team 1/Team 2 or Plaintiff/Defense. BP uses OG, OO, CG, CO. See Tournament setup and formats.

Silent round — a round whose results are kept off public results and standings. See Public pages and releases.

Slug — the short name in a tournament's address, for example my-open-2026. It cannot be changed later.

Speaker category — a group of speakers such as ESL or Novice, managed on Setup → Speaker categories. Public categories get their own speaker tab; categories can also decide break eligibility. See Standings and metrics and Breaks and eliminations.

Swing team — a team made up on the day to fill the last room instead of giving byes. It is drawn like any team, but it and its speakers are left out of standings and the break. See Rounds and draws.

Test score — an adjudicator score from a test that, when set, replaces the base score in allocation. See Feedback.

Tester — an adjudicator flag (always on for the adjudication core); the feedback pages note when a tester sat on an adjudicator's panel. See Participants and imports.

Tournament administrator — a person with full control of one tournament (Tabbycat's tab director). See Staff and roles.

Trainee — an adjudicator who sits on a panel without voting and cannot submit ballots. Only adjudicators marked as trainees can fill trainee slots. See Adjudicator allocation.

Two-team formats — UADC (Asian), Australs, WSDC and custom two-team. See Tournament setup and formats.

Upload now / Download and compare — the manual cloud sync for data that does not sync live (settings, rounds, motions, rooms, break categories, feedback and so on). Download compares the cloud copy with this device and shows conflicts. See Backups, restore and cloud sync.

Voting ballot — one scoresheet per voting adjudicator; the majority decides. BP ballots are always consensus. See Ballots and results.

Who-beat-whom — a standings metric that ranks two tied teams by their result against each other. See Standings and metrics.

Working copy — the tournament stored in this browser (IndexedDB), where the tab room's edits happen and draws, standings and breaks are computed. See Backups, restore and cloud sync.