I appreciate everyone's support, and I'm relieved the question is able to stay open, but the criticisms above underscore the point I was trying to make in my last Meta thread on the same question.
There are the "official" rules in the Help Center that those on meta.SE will cite, and then there are the rules as practiced and understood by the majority of the community. That incongruence leaves it up to users and moderators to vote based on/enforce whichever version of it they feel like at the time, resulting in a situation like mine with this question: the first Meta thread I posted about the same question justified the deletion of all my comments on it, based on the rule that important information and clarification should be kept to the body of the question; once I'd done that and included sufficient clarified, the second Meta thread on the question now tells me I should have kept the discussion to the comments.
I don't see that as irony, I see as it as an inconsistency with the site and how its rules are enforced. A user would have to be telepathic to determine which standard he'll be held to at any one time, and it has the effect of making the rules themselves meaningless in practice.