1 outta 3 aint bad. :)

What do you feel are larger problems?

6 man teams.
Prize pools, travel, lodging, motivation, in-game stalemates, class diversity, etc all suffer. The standard 6 class lineup is so much stronger than any other option. So many hitpoints to heal help make classes like heavy all but useless. Waiting around for everyone to get heals and buffs slows the pace of the game down more than necessary.

Defending 5v6 for 30 seconds is very easy when teams are good and turns a single pick into an all but meaningless advantage. You usually have to wait for 2 picks or a significant uber advantage to be able to force things. You should be able to pull people out of position on many maps with smart rotations and feints to break through choke points without uber. But you can almost always just split demo/solly/medic and solly/scout/scout to hold both paths. This makes being out of position isn't nearly as important. Gunboats medic diving is so low risk high reward largely because of the strength of defending 5v6.

This is like politics -- I could probably follow along if I wanted to but there's so much to read and digest that I'd rather let
someone else figure it out for me.

You know what? Why don't we play a couple pugs with these rules? If anyone is good at config coding, hit me up. I already have a server and a mumble, so if anybody could talk with me about what rules we'd implement, this could be really fun.

just decide bans in irc like you pick players, and then ban anyone who uses banned weapons