Bear with me. Format wars have been ongoing for as long as they were possible, and I don't doubt that they will persist. They're useful. Constant examination, even picking apart unto nitpicking, is the means by which thing evolve. There's also a certain Hegelian appeal to the ideal that all this dialogue is leading to some kind of spiritual elevation from the base things of CBI to a sublime, eternal QB. But you'd think five years of intelligent people talking about it would result in something by now. So at this point I'm starting to wonder if the approach is kind of the wrong tack to take. Historically, we start out with CBI. Then ACF is invented, which is basically CBI minus the annoying parts of the rules. And then, of course, more formats emerge...but this is the thing that's starting to get to me: despite all our invention and dialogue, we still really haven't broken out of the mold set for us by CBI years upon years ago. Any advance that ACF or NAQT or TRASH, while certainly very helpful, to the point of turning an unfair, unaccountable format into a fairer, far more responsive one, I don't think can be seen as more than incremental, in the big view. That brings me to my point. QB needs to be more experimental in its formats. I can't think of more than three college tournaments that aren't ten-point-tossup, thirty-point-bonus, four-on-a-side two-teams. We're creative people; I don't doubt that, given some thought, any number of unique, interesting, and fair formats could be arrived at. I should probably note that, while I did disdain Stan Jastrbzeski's proposal of the half-trash/half-academic format, I now have to say that, while I still think the application wasn't the best, he did have a point. So one idea worth toying with -- this would be the day after JCV in January, assuming nothing else gets scheduled then -- would be a guerilla-style meta-tournament consisting just of experimental formats. Kind of like a wine tasting, except nerdier. We're all aware that diversity is, in general, a good idea. All I'm suggesting is that we should pursue it more zealously. Edmund
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