Clarify how to handle changing standards
Visibility and incentives aside, answering old questions is awkward because of changing site standards. I've given up on submissions I started to write because I didn't know what I was allowed to do.
Can I submit a function as allowed by default now, but not when the challenge was posted? Am I expected to figure out what was standard then? If an existing answer spends bytes to process input like l=map(int,raw_input().split())
, do I have to do the same? I worry that if I take advantage of looser modern standards, I look like I'm winning unfairly by playing by different rules.
Moreover, most challenges from 2014 and earlier would be closed as unclear if posted today. So, I don't even know if I've met the spec, and if I ask in a comment, I'll probably never get a response. Should I just make a judgment call and edit that in? Is that rude, or maybe biased? What if some submissions interpret it differently? What if there's some dumb unobservable requirement that half the answers ignore, or a subjective bonus?
I find this uncomfortable enough that I often don't bother answering old questions, even when I've already golfed a solution and come to terms that it won't get much visibility.
Some community guidance on what's OK would make me feel less like I'm treading on thin ice. Or, community projects to clean up old dupe targets so that we can make decisions as a group.