You're not holding people to new standards. You're holding their research to new standards. Which is the only sensible course of action.
And no-one suggested that those papers should be rewritten. But insofar as there's some known problem with them, why is it a bad thing to have a public record stating that much?
We may be agreeing and mis-communicating, or agreeing violently, as I've heard it called, so let's get specific. What are you suggesting should happen to a paper when it's shown to have errors?
Nothing at all is wrong with adding new information to the public record stating the issues, that's what I mentioned is already happening -- new papers reference and demonstrate the weaknesses of old papers. In my field, as I suspect most, it's a time honored tradition to do a small literature review in the introduction section of a paper that mainly dismisses all related previous work as not good enough to solve the problem you're about to blow everyone's mind's with.
In my mind, nothing is wrong with what the statcheck authors did either. My one and only point at the top was that it's not surprising it ruffled some feathers, and that it didn't have to ruffle any feathers. That only happened because the results were made public without solicitation. @wyager was trying to paint the situation as a dichotomy between rude or unscientific, that rude was the only option. Rude is not the only option.
If statcheck hadn't published the review of old papers and contacted all the old authors, then I'm pretty sure two things would have happened: 1- this wouldn't have ruffled any feathers, and 2- it wouldn't have gotten much attention, and we wouldn't be talking about it.
And no-one suggested that those papers should be rewritten. But insofar as there's some known problem with them, why is it a bad thing to have a public record stating that much?