Maybe this explanation can be useful for this discussion (and maybe for other ones as well). There are bottom-up arguments and top-down arguments for powers. In one, you use various small details about individual occurrences and use them as evidence for some other power that encompasses all of them; the other is picking a specific power and detailing what its specifics are and all possible powers that are under it.
For example, you can use Wind Manipulation to do many things, like solidifying the air particles around someone to stop their movement, which would also fall under Paralysis Inducement. There are abilities that are very open to various usages and others that have more specific consequences of any given ability. So Wind Manipulation is a broader "top-down" ability that can have various specific usages, while Paralysis Inducement is a bottom-up ability that can be done as a consequence of various types of abilities (And the classification will change depending on the abilities in question).
There are some abilities that are, by nature of our classification, top-down and have various specific abilities as a consequence of it. Conceptual Manipulation and Abstract Existence are examples of them, even taking into account the various types that attempt to limit different usages.
Something that might have been missed after various revisions, I remember it being a lot more prominent when they first started being accepted in the wiki, but that might just be me not being as online as I once was, is that for top-down abilities, it's a lot better to have the actual ability in question being defined in the work, rather than taking various different abilities that when you gather then together might result in that specific ability, or even worse, use a few different abilities that fit in the definition of the top-down ability, use that to say "it's this top-down ability", and then use it to say "So it'll also have these other abilities that they never showcased before".
A problem that we had when Abstract Existence was first created was that people started to just use any statement like "I'm an abstract" and use that to say "So they have these abilities", but that isn't how it works. The wiki exists to categorize some potential in a work; it does not give the potential. We might categorize the potential differently from the intent of the author, like calculating destruction feats that were never thought of as being as powerful as they are when calculated, but won't really give anything that isn't at least somewhat in the work.
Originally,
this is why Abstract Existence had a note saying that just being called an "abstract" wasn't enough to get the classification; instead, it needed to be classified as such and demonstrate the abilities portrayed on the page to get it. It's a case in which you need both a bottom-up (Individual abilities) and top-down (umbrella ability) argument. You can have basically all the individual abilities portrayed in the Abstract Existence page and still not have Abstract Existence, just like you can be called an Abstract Existence and have none of the abilities there. Only when you have both, you get Abstract Existence.
Same goes for Conceptual Manipulation, you need to have the feats whose consequence fits under Conceptual Manipulation, and do so under the idea that it's Conceptual Manipulation. This is why the Dependent Concepts description explains that to be qualified as Conceptual Manipulation, you need to do the feat by what is called Conceptual Manipulation, not by doing other things that, as a general consequence, have an effect on a concept.
There's a lot of nuance in this, there are for sure cases in which there's so much detail that a work might just need to claim some name for the concepts/universals/forms, but it surely wouldn't be the case if not only there isn't all of them, but also no effective umbrella depiction, and you need to fit together different abilities that were never shown to be connected under that idea.
That is, you might have some Universal Energy System that can do many things, including individual abilities that fit under Conceptual Manipulation or Abstract Existence, but just because they are under the same power, it doesn't mean that for that reason, the UES is exactly an example of those powers. It needs to be painted under that idea, even if you need to explain the concepts by going for a general portrayal, even if they aren't named.
With this thread, what I get the impression is that there was never an actual depiction that shows "This is the power to manipulate concepts/ideas/forms/etc and it can do X", but rather "There's this power, and it has all these different abilities that can be done by something on a conceptual level, so it might as well be considered Conceptual Manipulation". I don't think that is how these things should work, but maybe that is just me (I don't know if the notes were removed in a revision because it was decided it could be allowed, or it was thought back then it was unnecessary. If someone can clarify this to me it would be helpful).
And this isn't even taking into account the very validity of some of the feats in question, that might be forced to be interpreted in a certain way, already thinking "it needs to be conceptual manipulation", when others might just as well be a more proper explanation.
I would say, just go with what was done with Abstract Existence. If you can guarantee all these abilities on their own, then you just add those abilities as their own thing without the need to use them to build a case for "conceptual manipulation". In the end, Conceptual Manipulation is just an umbrella ability that has various abilities as a consequence of it; you don't win a battle just by having "Conceptual Manipulation" under your index, but by doing things with it.
So, having the abilities on their own or as sub-effects of conceptual manipulation are basically the same thing, so in effect, nothing is lost by just listing them on their own, even if you don't have the Conceptual Manipulation umbrella.
