"In my view the only issue is when someone represents an image as unstaged or not manipulated, when in reality it is. I believe this is usually called "lying".
Of course, trying to define staging is something else again. That being said the arguments are really getting down to a level of philosophy. Let me give an example and ask you which of the following scenarios is where you would consider the image to be staged?
1. A candid shot where the subject is not aware of the photographer.
2. A candid shot where the subject is aware of the photographer.
3. A shot where the photographer asks the subject to change his or her pose.
4. A shot where the photographer asks the subject to move to a slightly different location to correct issues such as the background or the lighting.
5. A shot where the photographer gets the subject to move to a particular location and then pose in a particular way.
6. The photographer brings in a model or models and props and sets them up to emulate a scene he wants to photograph.
Scenario 5 is my understanding of how the famous Steve McCurry Afghan girl image was made.
The writer of the PetaPixel article lost my respect in some of his analysis He goes on about changes to the eye colour between two images and totally misses that the colours in the images are different too. Unfortunately, this is a "feature" of offset press printing.
Finally, we are discounting all of the techniques one can do with camera angles, focal length and shooting position. These all appear to be "legal" when we look at the rules that various organizations have put in place to define "no image manipulation"."
#6 seems to be the technique which McCurry used for many of his India photos...