Some exercises are marked deprecated in problem specifications. Tracks now may choose to mark them as deprecated or not.
As far as I know, marking them as deprecated means removing the exercise from the website. And that also removes the submitted solutions (at least access to them via website). This might be demotivating for students, which have already solved the exercise or are in the process of solving / mentoring.
Is it possible to “soft remove” an exercise? In such a way, that students cannot choose it from the list of available exercises anymore, but still can view their solutions (e.g. in “Completed” or “In progress” lists) and / or finish their work / mentoring sessions?
If that is currently not possible, is it possible to add such behaviour?
Marking an exercise as deprecatedis the soft remove. It disables the exercise from being downloaded/started by any new students, but retains solutions/iterations/mentoring sessions and both community solutions and completion points for those who have started or completed the exercise.
Marking something foregone on the other hand removes everything.
An example:
The Python track deprecated Beer Song in favor of Bottle Song around a year ago. However, I completed that exercise. Here you can see that I still have access:
Sorting them by newest shows nothing newer than 1 year ago (when we replaced Beer Song with Bottle Song.). But if you go to the Python track to find the Beer Song exercise as a new student, it’s not available to you (at least it shouldn’t be).
You can take a look here to see the community solutions, and here to see that the exercise is indeed flagged deprecated.
@BethanyG It’s a pleasure to read your answer. Everything I was interested in is shown perfectly. Thanks!
And I also have to admit, I should have taken a look into the docs on the website, where we have an article dedicated to deprecated exercises. I am so much used to not have documentation…
