Every language's standard library needs a "current best practices" concept, even if it's just a well-maintained document and not something structural like a special namespace.
I think the Python "decorator" concept goes a long way toward cleaning up code. Basically you can add a decorator to a routine that you've deprecated so that it will complain if it's actually used (you can even include advice on what would be a good replacement call).
As far as cleaning up what's installed as standard, it's not really practical to remove anything (the fact that it stays is one of the attractive things about Python in old code bases). What you can do though is define a preferred namespace, e.g. "preferred"; this would physically contain only those libraries that are recommended, and perhaps even forked copies of modules that only contain the functions that should be used. This gives programs the option to explicitly import from "preferred" and request purity over long-term stability.
I think the Python "decorator" concept goes a long way toward cleaning up code. Basically you can add a decorator to a routine that you've deprecated so that it will complain if it's actually used (you can even include advice on what would be a good replacement call).
As far as cleaning up what's installed as standard, it's not really practical to remove anything (the fact that it stays is one of the attractive things about Python in old code bases). What you can do though is define a preferred namespace, e.g. "preferred"; this would physically contain only those libraries that are recommended, and perhaps even forked copies of modules that only contain the functions that should be used. This gives programs the option to explicitly import from "preferred" and request purity over long-term stability.