Having joined a few rpg forums over the last year or two, I have read on others about the damage done by "canon wars" (no pun intended). I had never actually seen one in action.
An escalating argument has managed to set people against each other, who previously could disagree amicably.
I would recommend the use of the "ignore all postings by this user" function if anyone offends you...
assuming you haven't already used that function on my posts of course!
My personal opinion is that canon is only the material published by GDW, or officially licensed by them. Even the most logical assumption leading from published material can best be described as "canon
infers that..."
If, as a group, we want to expand that canon in a joint way, that is still not canon... just a group expansion of "in my T2k world."
As others have said, the GDW T2k material was an immense piece of work by a small company, without the internet to help research, and while also supporting several other games. Much of the knowledge we use to contradict GDW stuff was in fact secret at the time the game was published- I have never forgotten the weird experience of seeing a TV news programme explain during GW1, how a certain weapon system worked. Only 5 or 6 years earlier I had seen a briefing of the same facts, preceded by the warning "You have all signed the Official Secrets Act- if you repeat or discuss this material you will almost certainly be sent to prison, probably for several years."
I have edited this post, in line with Raellus' warning, to remove the part assigning blame for the argument. With hindsight that was not helpful!