It's interesting...
my post about the 5 minute penalty issue has been over a month ago, yet no one has responded to it yet.
Same goes for
XpheXI's questions about this topic. They remainded unanswered as well.
Either we've just been straightly ignored, which would be kinda rude, or the judges have no plans how to handle this questionable rule themselve, so no one was able to give a concrete answer.
However, I think XpheXI's compromise is a good idea. As long as no one / no rule strictly prohibits this, I'm going to submit a perfect playthrough video file / tas file in my entry's zip, proving how you can easily beat the level in less than 5 minutes. As long as no one objects to this, I define this as the solution of preventing any length-penalty.
Personally I'm not really afraid of this, since I've shortened my level a lot, but I want to define an unambiguous, objective solution for this rule.
And just to make it clear again:
I'm no opponent to this rule and I can clearly understand why it was implemented (really good way to save judges' patience without forcing the participant to submit an unendited hud e.g. by forcing him to keep a time limit of xxx seconds). Yet I want to make clear, if you add such a rule which annihilates 5% of the total score instantly, it should be more precisely defined than in about 2 sentences. That's why I initially came up with the huge post linked in the beginning and why I am asking for an objective solution for this.