Add:
With all the previous talk about "hacking" things to adapt Diamond that created the impression that Diamond was deviating from the common standard, it's important to know that Diamond is not deviating from the original algo, at least in this case anyway. IMHO, these things need to be prominently reported in periodic status reports.
"hacking" is how we creative types refer to the process of investigating something that is not behaving properly and guiding it to behave. This is applicable to any thing in life, not just software. At least, this is how I understand this English language word.

What you propose is good practice. However, it is very difficult to implement in forum formats like this. Here is a place for collaboration, more or less.