Writing.Com General Discussion

I'm pretty new to Writing.com and (to a lesser degree) on-line writing communities in general and in the few short days I've been here, random selections of peoples' work has shown me far more items written for contests than I've seen in the entire rest of my life combined.

As I read these and think about them, I found myself coming up with some questions I thought might a decent forum post--so here it is!

Would you review a piece written for a contest or from a specific writing prompt differently than one written from a more general perspective?

I could see reasons to go either way. On one hand, just because something was written to respond to a prompt, there's no reason not to hold it to the same standard you would any story. The prompt / contest structure is just inspiration scaffolding, right? it's like Iron Chef--yes, there are some prescribed ingredients, but what matters is the finished product.

On the other hand, the prompt inevitably restricts and warps the end product--certainly in length, and also in ways more artificial. There were likely time constraints of some kind. The objective wasn't a polished, general-purpose piece of art--it's more like an exercise in a specific sub-discipline ("can you write a story that includes four types of fruit and is also, in its entirety, a palindrome?") -- surely it's more fair to read the story through that lens?

And how to think about these things when the inciting prompt is lost to time? Does it even matter?

How do you do it?