Is it ok to ask questions that are only valid for a limited time?

Question

Looking at this question, I'm realizing that any good answer given will be wrong in 6 months, because which cards are in the Standard format change whenever a new set is released, and once a year some sets rotate out.

There is a similar meta question here, but it's not asking the same thing.

Also, there is a well-received question which has the same problem here.

One simple solution to this could be to just edit the question to ask about specific sets instead of asking about "standard". At the least, the answers given would remain correct even in a year, but it is hard to say if it would be good or useful question after the sets in question are no longer standard.

I seem to remember "too localized" being a close reason in the past, but I don't see it anymore. So should these questions be closed, edited to include specific set names, or just left alone?

Answer 1

The "Too Localized" close reason was removed four years ago. Now that it is gone, we no longer close questions simply because they are only useful for a certain period of time or a small group of people.

Regarding the current question, I believe that it is OK, but there should be clarification of which standard rotation the question refers to. A standard rotation can be uniquely identified by the most recent set, so it would be sufficient to restrict the question to "Amonkhet standard" somewhere in the question title or body. The same should be done for the other linked question.

Answer 2

This is an issue that exists for many SE sites, things change over time. Programming languages get new functions for SO, games get new versions, and new rules here, which is even more important for LCGs, CCGs and TCGs where the games update regularly.

In your example sets rotate out of standard, so of course what is in standard would change, but even questions that aren't so short term still can change with with changes to the games rules. Legend rule changed multiple times, Planeswalker rule is gone now and they just use the legend rule, mana burn was once a thing.

The best solution is to specify a time period and/or location in both the question and in the answer, for your example Amonkhet era standard. This would let people know they are looking at something with an expiry date.

For answers that were valid, but no longer are valid due to rules changes, we should leave the answer as is, but add in bold letters at the top a line saying it is no longer valid, something like This answer is no longer correct due to the change to 205.3j(Planeswalker rule) in September, 2017. Then we should post a new answer with current information.

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Edit to add: For CCGs like Magic, the rules and cards may change too often for this to be viable, but for other games the option to tag a specific rules set exists. Dungeons and Dragons has 5* editions, Warhammer 40k is now into it's 9th edition - and these edition tags specify when a question and its answers were valid. It might be worth looking into adding "tag warnings" to the games that have editions, to suggest tagging the specific edition their question is about.

*3.5 could be argued make it 6 editions.