So - I recently put out a bounty on this question, after having silently worked on it on my own a handful of times over the last month or so. I only just yesterday realized that there had been more "clues" than were visible in the current version of the post in previous edits, and I had only come to this realization because of something someone said in the comments.
I won't edit the original post, because that is rude as hell and also wildly unnecessary my dudes. However, I do think that people trying to solve the puzzle would benefit from those clues, and it's unreasonable to expect everyone who comes across a puzzle to read every revision it's ever had. I also don't expect people to collaborate on hints in the comments - aside from being obnoxious to read, comments are effectively impossible to format.
So I guess what I'm asking is: would it be acceptable—here specifically but also generally—to make a community wiki answer for hints/collaboration? I can't find anything here on Meta that specifically addresses this, and it seems like a harmless thing, but I don't want to rile anybody if there's a reason against this that I'm not aware of.