First, throwing rationing thinking out the window leads to magical thinking which isn't a good thing. Second, and yet again, if you have compressional forces on the spokes, that compression has to come from somewhere. The spoke is under tension. Compressing the spoke releases the tension and puts the spoke into another mode entirely. Look at BobG's picture from post 22
That's what compression of a spoke looks like. He is compressing a detensioned spoke against the tire and the spoke buckles. We don't see that kind of buckling in normal usage of a tensioned wheel. There is compression there but it is of the rim, not the spoke.
If you look more closely at the picture, you can see that the spokes on top of the wheel are longer than the spokes on the bottom. The spokes on the top of the wheel are under a slight amount of tension while the bottom ones are being compressed. The fact that they are buckling makes them effectively shorter. You can see much the same thing happening in this partially laced wheel
The spokes on the top of the wheel, from which the hub hangs, are resting in the spoke holes while the spokes on the bottom have dropped out of the bottom of the rim. The hub is clearly "hanging" from the top of the wheel. When rotated the hub and pulled the spoke against the rim as well as added the rest of the spokes, the bottom spoke will still stand proud of the rim on the bottom. If I were to put the rim on the ground and push downward on them, they would buckle just like BobG's do.
As I layered in tension, the spoke nipple pulls up against the rim but there is no compression of the spoke. The spoke is still under tension and the hub is hanging from the top spokes. Adding tension doesn't change that. Can you show at what point spokes on the bottom of the wheel transition from tension to compression during the tensioning process? How they transition from tension to compression when you put weight on the wheel without buckling like BobG's have?
What you have forgotten to mention is that the string would act like a normal wheel with rigid spokes
under tension. If you compressed any of the strings, the wheel would collapse.
Since you have studied stress and strain...essentially tension and compression...then you should know what they are and what they aren't. It's not that I don't "want" you to use the term compression but that you
can't use that term to describe a reduction of tension. The spokes aren't being compressed because they aren't being pushed on by
anything. The rim is being compressed...yes, it really is being compressed...but reduces the tension on the spokes which isn't the same as compressing the spokes. You can clearly see what compression of a spoke looks like in BobG's picture but that compression isn't present in a properly tensioned wheel wheel.