Aside from charged bolt, the allowed spells for regular Diablo were fairly well established. My memory is a bit fuzzy, but it was something like this: heal, heal other, stonecurse, teleport, town portal, holy bolt, apoc, infravision, golem, mana shield, bone spirit, bloodstar, flash, guardian, elemental, flame wave, and nova. I also think people were allowed to use charges from unique staves regardless of the spell.
Phasing was considered a less noble form of teleport.
Firebolt and fireball less noble than elemental.
Firewall less noble than flamewave.
Lightning and chain lightning less noble than nova.
Inferno... I don't remember if it was allowed or not, to be honest. While it is certainly "eschewed by the masses", the real issue would be whether you consider it a unique form of fire damage or a less noble variation on firewall/flamewave. I probably would not use it, but I also would not use charged bolt which was a pretty common elitist spell.
With charged bolt, here is how I see it: It is pretty hard to convince me that lightning is more similar to nova than charged bolt. I would say the exact opposite is true. It's even hard to make a case that charged bolt is "eschewed by the masses" because almost every non-variant sorcerer created starts the game relying on charged bolt. I think this variant was created with the warrior class in mind, so it wasn't really a problem that most early-game spells were not allowed. When people wanted to play elitist mages, it became an important issue. If you don't allow charged bolt and/or inferno, that leaves no spells to kill animals or demons until you get into the catacombs-level books. I think necessity dictated a looser interpretation to allow charged bolt.
While there was some consensus on most spells, the rules have always been vague and open to interpretation, and you are free to use your own judgment in applying them to the Hellfire spells.
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