A sources reliability is verified either through competence or veracity based upon previous evidence and experience, if either cannot be met, and in this case it cannot, they have to be classed as not reliable.
That source stated it was a first person account, therefore initially it would be classed rather highly as Known directly – ‘information known first-hand by the source’.
The initial score of not reliable and known directly, means ultimately without corroboration or experience, we cannot trust the information currently.
A good example would be Drew, he has a higher reliability score (subjectively) due to his involvement with the fan base over decades and FD regards ED; being a writer his career would suffer if he gave a false account. But he never really over egged the statements and always left it open for discussion.
Drew himself does allude to some corroboration on these forums, but is pretty vague.
Post in thread 'The Quest To Find Raxxla'
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/the-quest-to-find-raxxla.168253/post-9349898
On the whole the only questions this raises initially is why no one has ever gone on record to corroborate it; the second is what would this actually prove
The first can either be because A: it’s false; B: no one else remembers. C: FD issued an NDA. D: witnesses refuse out of loyalty. E: it provides witnesses an advantage.
Option A is likely because it can be used as a method to generate interest and an audience for the informant (eg viewership), however being proved wrong would have a negative impact. However any press is good press(!).
Option B is highly likely, as time and alcohol may be a factor or simply no one else heard / understood it correctly. Time is a great factor because historically information looses veracity if it is not actively relevant.
Option C is highly unlikely (but not impossible) as it implies FD paid everyone off, and inflates Raxxla’s importance overly dramatically which only feeds into option A.
Option D is realistically possible because it assumes the employee or FD would be tarnished somehow, or it reveals some game mechanism error. However similar statements have been made since to no detriment and it implies that like option C that such information has some great import, but it may not.
Option E is likely, but only if such temporal knowledge provides a clue, which isn’t logical as such information can be still correlated, unless it involves more information than initially reported, again this feeds into option A.
Overall if true it’s possible everyone who attended cant truly rely on recollection alone, and doubt has set in, some may possess a sense of loyalty or know it’s better not to cast aspersions, incase it generates a false memory.
If the revealing of this knowledge impacted FD negatively, one has to further ask why?
Overall on its own the statement lends no information on how to find Raxxla; however if confirmed to be true it would support all the other evidence provided to this date, that Raxxla truly was in game; and above all, it would confirm it was ‘accessible’. Is that a big deal?
Again context has to be thrown into this mix, this information is potentially out of date, it may also be out of context if it predates other information, or it could relate to something no longer in game, because FD has removed things since 2017.
If there doesn’t exist any additional information, or if the date of said statement doesn’t correlate to some in game temporal knowledge, one could presume it reveals some in game element or more probable a flaw, FD don’t want to comment, simply because this would confirm this and relates to something historical about the game they don’t feel comfortable about.
What could that be is subjective, however following previous examples, FD’s general modus operandi, the fact that a lot of lore got purged in around 2017 and the Dark Wheel missions were removed in or around that period of 2016/2017, it could I presume allude to the DW missions which no longer exists.
If that holds up and someone randomly found the system and was let in, it insinuates it could have been bugged. Hence all the brew-ha-ha…
More realistically however, is it’s liable to have been just an Easter egg hunt; FD don’t care too much about it; yeah some Cmdr went there but didn’t scan the system (a common play style (it likely was me, I used to do it all the time!)); FD keep a tight lip simply because - well that’s the professional way to go, and it only increases their PR and we are all generally over inflating this.
Overall without further proof, it’s subjective and should not inform on our ongoing investigations as it is an intelligence gap, at most counter-intelligence and ought to be treated with scepticism.
Although my suspicions are it’s more likely to be accurate.
