Judging Saxton's official work: which sources are OK?

[Mr. Oragahn]

I don't have to point to the latest big three parts ICS topic at SBC.

During the discussion, it became clear to remind some posters that what was under scrutiny, and directly attacked despite the inaccurate title, was Saxton's official work in the EU, not all the Incredible Cross Sections series.

I and others, who were convinced that there was enough evidence to class many figures claimed by Saxton, via official EU writings and notes, as high end outliers, in total contradiction with either other fragments of the EU, or in contradiction with higher sources (movies, novelizations, CGO show, etc.).

Slightly before the middle of part II, member Point45 entered, and one of his running tactics was to rely on the E2:ICS and E3:ICS to defend Saxton's claims, which was perfectly regular.

Now, as far as I was concerned, I also noticed that Vympel used some references from other EU books to defend the ICSes.
It's only after I realized that most, if not all of them came from other EU books which Saxton had been consultant for that I said wait, there's a problem here.

From there, I strictly rejected any official source for which Saxton had been involved in its realization, because it was a form of circular reasoning by association.

[Mike DiCenso]

It might be interesting to do a comparison to Saxton's earliest work, which might have the least contamination by Wong, Poe, and Young among other pro-Wars Versus debaters, and see how that compares to his later, wanked out materials, like the AoTC:ICS. But otherwise I agree in principle that citing works elsewhere in the EU with Saxton's stamp on them is dangerously close, if not actually a form of circular reasoning in and of itself.
-Mike

[Praeothmin]

which might have the least contamination by Wong, Poe, and Young among other

Who's to say it isn't the other way around?
Why could it not be Saxton' earlier work that paved the way for Wong's wank towards SW?

[Mr. Oragahn]

It is hard to say, really, who started this.
What I noticed, however, is that Saxton had much lower numbers earlier on, on certain subjects, like the DSII's size (as evidence by Sarli's take on it, which quotes measures from Saxton before he started to modify his site to mirror his official work).

All in all, it could just be that both Saxton and Wong found themselves agreeing on the upper ends from the beginning.

[Mike DiCenso]

Saxton's site goes a fair ways back... to February 1995, and the initial preparation work for it would have had to go back some time even earlier. Now I don't know if the earliest version of the SWTC had as much blatant wank in it, and it likely did not have very much influence from Wong or Poe since the former wasn't involved in the debates and the latter was only starting to post to the old "Galaxy Class Starship Versus Imperial Stardestroyer" thread on Usenet. I knew of SWTC, but I never really looked at who was contributing ideas to the site until it was becoming more and more referenced in the Versus debates a couple years later, in 1997, and then I started seeing Wayne, Wong and eventually Brian Young among others getting credit.

Interestingly enough, it is also about this time frame that Saxton jumped into the debate at various points as referenced here in Robert Scott Anderson's article which provides links to two of Saxton's responses to people ( you can follow the Google pages to other Versus debate postings of the Usenet era.
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

Saxton's corrections brought to specific points which he considered incorrect would have been enough if there had not been, indeed, that feeling that he was scornful in some of his replies, and showed his tooth against Trekkies.

That he let himself be dragged there, or more precisely followed the trail and jumped in the pond, doesn't tell much though.

That said, I have found myself getting involved in versus threads where I was not interested into bringing a final conclusion to the debate, but only to correct errors.

This only happened because I orbited the versus scene, there's no way denying it that I have an interest in that form of activity.

I think it's pretty much a prerequisite before even starting to read any topic in any versus. Why intervene otherwise? He largely repeated what he put on his own website after all, which should have been plain enough for anyone with no interest in even merely reading any versus debate.

If anything, it's a demonstration of him failing to this temptation.
Besides, not taking side in the gigantic Trek vs Wars when you've dedicated a large portion of your life writing a technical analysis of so many aspects of the technology and industry in Star Wars, to the point of being sanely and kindly obsessed with it makes it hard to believe that he'd feel completely neutral, and would have never, in any reply, mail or else, claimed that effectively, under X or Y conditions, the Empire (or some other force in SW) would prevail.

Ultimately, we can go on for ages about his tastes, blah blah, but it's not a concern.

What matters is what he says, and I have many problems with that.