Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-10197675-20130806142227/@comment-25356303-20190420231201

I feel compelled to remark that Bethesda's vagueness on the matter of canonicity gives you reason enough to consider something like Sermon Zero in the scope of the broader lore, even if you don't think of it as "official." i.e. Bethesda doesn't have to include it in a game in order for you to talk about its merits as a work.

You can cherry pick various perspectives from different developers stating that "only in-game is lore" or "everything is lore," but the one continual theme (and the most recent one) has been along the lines of Schick's "it's up to you," which is somewhere in between Hines' alleged quote or Kirkbride's thesis in C0DA.

Within reason, it is therefore appropriate to give people some leeway as far as the discussion of the lore is concerned. I don't think most people would really mind if you refused to consider a pure fanfiction by someone with no historical or current connection to the series as worthy of consideration, but anything that is documented or linked to on the wiki is certainly fair game for debate.