This August, the International Quidditch Association will present the IQA Rulebook v. 5.0, a newly updated version of the rules of Quidditch. To learn more, IQA staff writer Kristy Wright spoke with IQA rules council president Will Hack.

What are some of the most noticeable changes to the 5.0 version of the rulebook?

One noticeable change is the reintroduction of penalty box, which was in previous versions of the rulebook. There will also be a new mechanic for stopping and restarting plays, where players will have to stop in place in certain situations on the referee’s whistle. They will be allowed to resume, with everything else unchanged, after the referee has resolved the situation; we got the idea for this rule from women’s lacrosse.

There will also be a five-minute “seeker floor” to try to prevent extremely short games. Seekers will be required to remain on the pitch until this floor has ended, and then will be free to search for the snitch. This floor will be adjustable for pitches that have special circumstances.

There are a number of other changes, but you’ll have to wait for the rulebook release to see those.

Why update the rulebook?

There were a lot of gray areas in the rulebook, especially in areas like how to restart play after a stoppage. We’ve tried to close any loopholes and generally make the rulebook more comprehensive. With any luck, it will be more reader-accessible as well.

What goes into the process for updating the rulebook?

Updating the rulebook is a year-long process. We consider input from the entire league, incorporating what we hear at tournaments and online. Jared Kowalcyzk, the former rules council president, set everything in motion, and I took over the task of working all of the council’s decisions into rulebook form when Jared had to step down due to having too many obligations this summer.

On a day-to-day basis, we discuss particular rules that need to be adjusted in the rulebook. If we come to a consensus, the change is incorporated directly into our intermediary rulebook (our current incarnation, this close to the release, is Rulebook 4.9). If there is disagreement, we hold a vote before reaching a decision.

The rulebook council currently has 11 members, all of whom were chosen by submitting a resume when the council formed last year. Everyone has an equal vote, and there is a wide variety of regions represented on the council to try to get different opinions from around the league.

Have there been any challenges with updating the rulebook?

[Laughs] Every day. The issues we deal with are quite contentious, so it is impossible to make every member of the council happy, much less everyone in the league. An example was the penalty box vs. penalty shot debate. The majority opinion was in favor of instituting penalty shots to deal with fouls that prevent a goal, but a few members felt that a penalty box would be much better for the game. The debate got pretty heated. Ultimately, because penalty shots might require play to be stopped for a long period of time, we decided upon the penalty box by a narrow margin.

Of course, trying to combine the collected revelations of five-plus years of Quidditch into a single coherent whole has a lot of less exciting problems. Right now it is all about reorganization and trying to make the grammar and tense match across the rulebook. But I think the rules themselves are most challenging, because that is what we are most passionate about.

How will the IQA notify teams about the new rules?

The planned release of the Rulebook 5.0 is on Aug. 15. The IQA hasn’t been historically successful in hitting its deadlines, but I plan to turn that around. [Laughs]

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

The council has put in an incredible amount of work into this rulebook, and I believe we have made Quidditch a lot better for it. When Rulebook 5.0 comes out, I think you all will be quite pleased with the result.