I have thought a lot about nudges because I'm that guy who goes through all the rules and makes sure everyone gets it before we play a board game. In general, I don't like nudges if it's a contest puzzle because:
i) It is a slippery slope. If everyone asked for nudges, then everyone would get the answer as long as there are enough people on this forum who solved the puzzle -which is always the case-. Imagine a contest where everyone gets the answer beforehand, the entire idea of a contest is dead in that case.
ii) There will always be people who won't be aware of this forum/who won't have friends and family who solve the puzzle/who are ethically opposed to nudges. That becomes an unfair advantage in the long run, and it's especially bothersome if you see everyone asking for nudges and you don't because that makes you feel like a sucker.
iii) There is a slim chance that this forum turns into a nudge market if people join the platform only to ask for help. This is very unlikely now but if we had 5000 members, there is a reality where nudge messages overwhelm the conversation any given week.
All that being said, it's impossible to regulate nudges. People could privately ask others, some people already have friends so they get "nudges" anyway, it is bad vibes... Unless the constructor/organizer said "well, please do this by yourself", you can't control people's preferences on an ambiguity. It's not cheating unless the rules explicitly say so even if it might feel like it.
In a way it's like the debate on performance enhancing drugs. Caffeine is technically a PED but you can't ban athletes from drinking coffee. So you can't ever create an all-encompassing list of banned substances, and there will be people who find loopholes/use novel substances that are not strictly banned etc. It's also morally ambiguous: some countries are super rich and have access to mega facilities with state-of-the-art medical/technological stuff. Why should it be bad for an athlete from an underdeveloped country to try and make up for that completely legal disadvantage? Basically all athletes feel the need to get a "nudge" and probably everyone does in some form or shape. There's no definite answer to that debate.
tl;dr I don't like nudges but it is and will always be a reality unless the meta constructor explicitly says they are against it. Or if all forum users agree that we shouldn't get nudges, we simply don't. It's not like you can Google a meta answer, you need another person who actually solved it.
