If debate is meant to be preparation for participation in a polity, why would you adhere to exclusionary jargon and obscure proceduralism? Of course it's fun to be an insider, as in any other sphere of nerd endeavor, but this is the rhetorical equivalent of bodybuilding with the help of steroids. Yes, it is satisfying to the competitors, but at the expense of comprehensibility to everyone else.

As a non-American who loved debate growing up (but in a more old-fashioned and qualitative policy forum style), the first time I saw policy debate on TV I almost threw up in disgust. This kind of thing is why voter participation rates are so low and people hate politicians (sweeping assertions that I have no intention of substantiating today, by the way).

The research and critical thinking aspects of this are absolutely valuable skills to learn. But the more technical it becomes, the more you're applying the logic of industrial production to qualitative argument, to the point of losing your audience completely. I suggest that this emphasis on point-scoring reduces the incidence of critical thinking in the population as a whole, and offer as an analogy the Selectorate Theory model of Bueno de Mesquita & Smith in The logic of political survival.

In brief, this theory argues that per-capita rewards for members of a selectorate (group which chooses political leaders) diminish as the size of the group initially expands but gradually increase again and exceed the original limit as the selectorate comes to comprise a greater portion of the electorate.

As far as debate is concerned, it is thus more fun at first to win the approval of a small number of insiders through gamesmanship than to please a larger general audience, but as you are able to successfully appeal to larger audiences the fun factor increases again and will eventually exceed the original maximum.