Should a Work only be created in preparation for adding a linked Edition?
I ask this question because on Bookogs I created numerous Works in the belief that in time they would be used by the community. Instead my actions caused a major controversy as many in the community felt a Works should only be generated when an accompanying book was submitted.
I don’t see why not. Your contribution of missing works is going to help future editors (including yourself) when they want to add a new edition that contains the work.
In addition to that there might be unpublished works of an author for which you obviously can’t add an edition. The works could (or should 
) be added nevertheless to complete the author’s bibliography.
I have seen and also have created standalone works in MB (which aren’t related to recordings in this case) and most of BB’s rules are implicitly derived from MB if not stated otherwise.
I 100% agree.
You might not have time to create an Edition (which is fine in my opinion), or you might be going through a list of an authors short stories, but not have an edition of them, or…
As long as information is correct it has its place on BookBrainz, even if it could be considered incomplete in some way. Incomplete data is better than absent data 
That is good news. At least I won’t have to go through the difficult process of removing tar and feathers again.