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Okay hopefully this is productive.

As I have been thinking about it over the past day, I truly think Edgic should include guidelines for a "Type B" winner's edit - that of Bob's and Danni's. Given that a traditional Edgic winner's edit (what I call Type A) is not craftable, what can we predict about how editors will behave? With two of these cases in the bank, I think we can start speculating on that.

I think the guidelines fit roughly into 3 categories:
Universal: Should fit any winner no matter what.
Type A: Fit only traditional Edgic (All winners except Danni and Bob)
Type B: What the editors are likely to do if a Type A edit is not possible.

If I were to personally break them all down and make up my own Type B guidelines, this is what I come up with. Please give feedback! I make no claims that the guidelines I came up with are good - I just intend to get the ball rolling.

Universal Guidelines
1) The winner is very unlikely to receive an INV rating during the course of the season (questionable as per discussions with TLS)
2) The winner will likely receive at least a 2 visibility in Episode 1 and will probably make some strong impression early in the episode in the form of a confessional.
3) The winner will have at least some significant editing in the merge and possibly any swap episodes that may occur.
4) The ending is typically set up to be a somewhat of a 'surprise'. You either don't expect the winner or second place to be there. These two are often manipulated in the editing to make each look like they have a chance to win.

Type A (Traditional Edgic) Guidelines
1) The winner may have ups and downs, but is typically not too UTR/INV or too OTT.
2) The winner will typically have a fair amount of meaningful editing and typically won't be ignored in long stretches.
3) Typically the winner is not overly Positive or Negative.
4) Over the course of the game the winner's presence and visibility should end up closer to the average of all the players. (The winner typically gravitates to near the top in MOR differential, which calculates the closeness to average in presence, tone and ratings).
5) Typically the winner is surrounded by players who keep our focus to distract us from the winner. These players are often OTT and much of the complexity and strategy centers in this core group. This core group can be a combination of members of more than one complex group, rather than all being from one, original tribe.
6) The winner will have substantial comments/insight from many of the jury members that may resurface in front of the jury or mislead the audience on voting.

Type B Guidelines
1) The winner will likely be edited to be more positive than negative.
2) The winner may have long stretches where they appear to be ignored or underutilized, but they will never be completely absent.
3) The winner will have a substantially stronger postmerge.
4) The winner will be surrounded by many distractions, some of which will be strong Type A candidates that have flaws in their edits.
5) The winner's story is one that would not easily be told by using a Type A edit, usually due to some sort of constraints due to the player who won.
6) The winner will have fewer CP episodes and much less strategic focus than a Type A winner's edit typically would.

Guidelines about Guidelines:
1) Winners typically follow a Type A pattern.
2) If no players fit the Type A pattern well, the winner is likely to have a Type B edit.
3) If no players fit the Type A or Type B editing guidelines, it is possible that a 3rd, as of yet unknown type of winner edit is being used. However, given current observations, such an edit would be extremely rare and thus unpredictable.

Dropped Guideline:
If two people are a 'known final pair' then the likelihood of them actually being the final two is slim. It would need to be a situation that cannot be avoided (i.e. Amber/Rob)

Okay, so why did I add and move what I did? I think most of Type A fits right where it was on the traditional list. The only moves were the dropped known pair guideline and some moves to universal guidelines. These are the guidelines I believe both Danni and Bob fit. I also added written versions of guidelines that so many people use but are not written down. People use these things a lot so why not make them explicit?

For Type B I looked at Danni and Bob's edits and tried to find constants. Here's what I'm thinking:

1) The winner will likely be edited to be more positive than negative.

Neither Danni nor Bob ever got an N. This also makes editing sense: if you have a player who can't be edited as winning through strategic means, you may as well make them likable. Why would they ever edit a player who couldn't be shown as deserving strategically as unlikable? The viewer response would be awful.

2) The winner may have long stretches where they appear to be ignored or underutilized, but they will never be completely absent.

Sort of the converse of Type A guidelines on the subject. These players seem to get lost in a sea of huge distractions sometimes and end up getting less attention than your typical winner. However, neither of them ever got an Edgic-rated INV.

3) The winner will have a substantially stronger postmerge.

Both players picked up substantially postmerge

4) The winner will be surrounded by many distractions, some of which will be strong Type A candidates that have flaws in their edits.

In both seasons where this happened, no one had a good Type A edit by the end. I believe this is a clue that a Type B winner is present.

5) The winner's story is one that would not easily be told by using a Type A edit, usually due to some sort of constraints due to the player who won.

This is what everyone says when this happens - Danni hid her strategy and Bob had none. This forces the editors to use something other than a Type A edit.

6) The winner will have fewer CP episodes and much less strategic focus than a Type A winner's edit typically would.

Just an observation that CPs and strategy are much rarer with these edits.

Again, I don't want to come across as Mr. Answers here! I'm just brainstorming! However, I am utterly and fully convinced that SOME sort of action needs to be taken to reconcile Type B winners into Edgic theory. We can't just ignore this piece of the puzzle - winners clearly do not fit into the current guidelines all of the time. Two winners since ASS have fit a qualitatively and quantitatively different editing pattern.

This exercise of brainstorming guideline revisions is likely to be met with disdain and rebuffs from anyone who hates the idea of someone suggesting big changes. I understand that. I may get flack for it and some people will suggest I FOAD for trying to destroy the foundations of Edgic (although I only suggest dropping one thing).

Nonetheless, I don't care. I know this is more helpful to Edgic than bickering and playing the blame game. We have problems with the theory, clearly. We could just bitch at each other for the next month or two and change nothing or we could do the brainstorm thing. Please tell me I'm not the only one who wants to get this sort of thing moving in a concrete and not just a hypothetical sense.

Okay fire away