Nearly a year ago, I wrote an article criticizing congress docket group chats as harmful. They still are ineffective, toxic, and exclusionary. However, in the meantime, competitors and tournaments alike have become more conscious of their presence and consequences. This article will set out to offer a more nuanced perspective on docket group chats, why they form, why they're harmful, and what both competitors and tournaments can do to limit their influence.

First of all, let's review: what is a congress docket group chat? Often, multiple debaters attending a major congressional debate tournament will create a group chat to discuss the order in which the bills should be debated. Debaters intend to make this group chat as large as possible to maximize the number of participants who may agree with the docket proposed in the group chat. Although it's a rough process that never results in complete agreement, these group chats usually come to some sort of consensus on which bills should and shouldn't be debated. For example, for Sunvite 2024 just two weeks ago, one competitor started a group chat to go through this process. At its largest the chat included nearly 100 competitors in the pool, more than half of the 152 entries in congress. After extensive discussion, disagreement, and a fair deal of trolling, the group chat administrator prepared this graphic to push the docket preferred by the group chat.