It should be noted once the Guidelines are out for public comment the place to comment and offer feedback is the BJCP Forums so we have an archive which can be reviewed.
I find the “Clone Beer” category to be a little confusing and hard to judge. Imagine winning two medals for brewing a Pliny clone after entering it as a clone and DIPA.
I suppose one could enter it as both a Clone and a DIPA, but unless it was the best clone and the best DIPA it would not be assured of a medal.
For a “clone” judge panel they would probably want to have a smartphone and google at their fingertips in case they ran into a clone they had never tasted. I remember way back in the day with my De Dolle Oerbier clone having to write out a description for the judge panel.
That can happen other ways too. Same beer entered as similar styles (Scottish 60/70/80, American pale/IPA, etc). To me part of the reason to have a clone category would be to standardize what information entrants provide to judges. Clones often don’t fit style guidelines but aren’t necessarily well described by the ‘base style and specialty ingredients’ paradigm. But yeah, what happens if someone wants to clone a classic example? Maybe that’s addressed in the full guidelines.
From what I heard and inferred I think the Clone category is. Lining of beers that might not fit other categories. So if you have a Pliny clone it should obviously be in double IPA, not specialty clone.
Someone please tell Gordon not to change ESB to whatever it is they are changing it to. Seriously? 6 billion people know what ESB is. How can a dozen people do away with it? Keep that up and no one will know what BJCP is.
In the talk Gordon mentioned that they wanted substyle names to be a single name, with alternatives mentioned in comments - any of which is acceptable. The problem they noticed with a name with alternatives (like Extra Special/Strong Bitter) was that people were starting to say 'I entered an Extra Special Strong Bitter).
Other than that they probably want to get away from acronyms which can have different meanings to different people (especially since BJCP is more and more international). I mean, you could drink an Enterprise Service Bus but it has a metallic finish.