Minor repair

A minor repair is a type of counterplan that is generally nontopical by virtue of being insignificant. It argues that there is a much simpler and quicker way to solve the Affirmative's harms than enacting their plan.

Most properly constructed minor repairs compete with the Affirmative plan through net benefits (by rendering the Affirmative plan an unnecessary waste of time and money), and do not uphold the resolution by virtue of being too small to count as a "significant" or "substantial" reform. Strategically, it may be advantageous to combine minor repairs with general significance arguments; the less significant the advantages of the Affirmative plan are, the easier it is to prove that the minor repair is better.

Criticism
Some debaters criticize the label of "minor repair" as an unnecessary and confusing distinction. Because minor repairs require negative fiat even if insignificant, they retain the most fundamental properties of a counterplan. This leads some debaters to conclude that distinguishing minor repairs from any other sort of counterplan is unnecessary.