This sounds like a pretty good idea (and one that's possibly workable, at that!) One alternative would be to invert your logic. Instead of

use warnings version => 5.008003;
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to only get warnings introduced at or before 5.8.3, perhaps a

use warnings lastversion => 5.008003;
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to only get the relevant warnings introduced, and

no warnings 'lastversion';
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as the opposite. This means that newer code will implicitly support the new warnings (because it lacks a 'lastversion' declaration), while retrofitting old code to inhibit the new warnings (in case it causes a problem) is one line added to the top of the file. The already-lexical nature of 'use warnings' should take care of the rest.