How this material is written, checked, and corrected.
Students and coaches are being asked to trust guides, cases, and evidence summaries with their preparation time. This page says who writes them, what counts as a source, how often they are reviewed, and what happens when we get something wrong.
Policy last updated September 14, 2026.
Who writes it
Guides, cases, lesson plans, and evidence entries are written by Andrew Thomas, founder of the Charlotte Urban Debate League, and reviewed by CUDL coaches before each topic period. Every guide carries a byline, a publication date, and a revision date. Nothing on this site is published anonymously.
What counts as a source
- Government data and reports: agencies, the Congressional Budget Office, the Congressional Research Service, the Government Accountability Office.
- Peer-reviewed research, cited with a DOI or a stable repository link.
- Nonpartisan research organizations with published methodology.
- Major news outlets, for events and for reporting on primary documents.
- Everything else, labeled. Industry-funded studies, advocacy organizations, preprints that have not been peer reviewed, and student journals appear in the evidence library with that status stated in the entry.
What we do not do
- We do not reproduce other authors' text. Evidence entries give the tag, the citation, the finding in our words, and a link, so the student reads the original.
- We do not publish testimonials, participation counts, or competition results we cannot substantiate. Program figures come from CUDL records and say so where they appear.
- We do not name partner schools or students.
- We do not sell placement. Sponsors fund coaching and competition costs. They do not review, approve, or influence anything published here, and no sponsor has editorial input.
- We do not run advertising or third-party analytics. See the privacy page for what the site does collect.
Review cycle
- Topic primers and sample cases: written within two weeks of each NSDA topic release, then revised once during the topic period.
- Format and skills guides: reviewed before each season and whenever a rule changes.
- Evidence entries: links checked at each review; the verification date appears on the page.
- The research bibliography: reviewed each season against the published literature.
- The tournament tracker: checked monthly against the Tarheel Forensic League schedule.
- Every change is logged on the updates page with a date.
Corrections policy
If something here is wrong, we want to know, and we would rather hear it from a student who read the source than from a judge in a round.
- Report it through the general contact form by phone at 704-650-2313, or by email at info@cltdebateleague.org. Name the page and what is wrong.
- We check it against the source within two business days.
- If it is wrong, we fix the page, add a dated note to the change log, and reply to you.
- If a claim cannot be sourced, we remove it rather than soften it.
A correction is a fix to a published fact. Adding new material or updating a figure after a new report is a revision, and revisions are logged the same way.
Corrections log
Open the claims ledger and source index
September 14, 2026. Two links to the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute and one to NASA's Moon to Mars objectives pointed at addresses that had moved. Found by the automated link check and replaced with the current pages.
September 13, 2026. A link on the impact and research pages pointed to a Leading on Opportunity page that no longer resolves. Replaced with WFAE's report of the same Opportunity Insights finding.
September 13, 2026. The practice hub and home page described eight practice tools after four more were published. Corrected to twelve.
This log starts with the corrections made during the build. New entries appear here and in the change log.
Artificial intelligence
The CUDL Guide in the corner of every page answers from an index of this site. When it is connected to Google's Gemma model, it can answer in its own words using the pages it matched, and it shows those pages so you can check it. It does not write the guides, and it is told to say it does not know rather than invent an answer. If it tells you something this site does not support, report it.
What we publish, in numbers
Counted from this build on September 14, 2026.
Found an error?
Tell us the page and the problem. We check it within two business days and log the fix.