A very good point that is ideed the ultimate answer to my question by guiding to Special Backtracking Control Verbs.

It states that (*FAIL) can be used to force the engine into backtracking and that this is equivalent to (?!). So version 2 and yours are basically the same and both are guaranteed to work. The trickery from version 3 is not needed.

So in the end it is "use" and not "abuse".