Weird, I was the one who made that change in a commit called "latest discoveries", so I apologize.

But I don't remember why, it was likely triggered by learning that some implementations were returning just the plaintext string. I remember going through the Snort and NDK source code at this time trying to understand the unwritten spec, but that part got over my head probably and I just assumed it was a simple string since that would make the most sense. 

 Thanks for your work.
How could I better follow NIP changes? Just watch the git repo on github? Maybe there could be nostr-nip-report account or hashtag that would scream at devs that there were some changes to existing specs? Some changes are inevitable so I'd rather stay up to date than stay ignorant. 

 Yes, I want to see this too. A list so I can catch up from where I left off. Anything that might be a breaking change should be on the list.