And there's another word

Verisimilitude--the appearance of being true or real. All the 'accuracy/realism' arguments get back to making plastic and allied materials in a small scale look like something made of metal/wood/whatever in a much larger scale. Even paint is affected--scale effect, perceptions of weathering, how close actual applications were to technical specs.

I can talk about what I want with my models. I cannot talk about what I want with your models. I can talk about what I want a producer/merchant to offer on the open market. I cannot talk about what you ought to want. So where in this morass is there room to talk about accuracy or realism or even verisimilitude? The answer is that every comment, backed by scholarly rigor or not, is accompanied by the implied perception of the author that others might care as much or as little as he does, and every one of us then must adjust our reading to take into account that degree of involvement or disengagement.

You know, I will never warm up to the over-weathered models that others here find so exquisite. They completely lack verisimilitude to me, and smack of the triumph of technique over discretion. But that cannot gainsay that some folks enjoy building that way, and a lot of others like looking at them. And, truthfully, are not we better off for all the various ways the hobby can be interpreted? Orthodoxy, whatever it embodies, leads to prejudice and stifles creativity. Our community is small enough without emphasizing schismatic differences.