[Maédhros]

My position is that you don't have to choose between the stories, & classify one as 'better' or even that one expresses Tolkien's vision better than another. If we were talking about a collection of completely unrelated tales this wouldn't arise - so, the question is - are we actually talking about completely seperate stories? If we take BoLT as a different work than the pre-LotR Sil, & both as different from the post LotR Sil, there is no need to make these choices. And I think the premise you are working from is simply wrong. Because Tolkien uses many of the same characters, settings & events acoss all three (& in the Annals, etc) it simply 'fools' us into seeing them as the 'same' story evolving over time. But each was the 'definitive' version of the work when they were composed. Lost Tales was not written as a first draft of the post LotR Sil. It was a work which expressed Tolkien's desires at the time it was written. His desires had changed when he came to write the Sil in the 30's, so it was a different work. When he returned to the legends in the post LotR period, he was again writing something entirely different.

This is a valid opinion but an opinion nonetheless. I'm really not sure if we have read the same stories though. I think that this approach regarding the manuscripts and typescripts of JRRT is wrong. Take for example the Quenta Noldorinwa. If that version of the "Silmarillion", (the only complete Silmarillion) that JRRT wrote btw, is a complete separate "definite" work apart from the Tales, why would JRRT make a mention of those same Tales in the Quenta Noldorinwa?

From the Shaping of Middle-earth: Quenta Noldorinwa

On a time Ulmo contrived, as is told in the Tale of the Fall of Gondolin, that he should be led to a river-course that flowed underground from Lake Mithrim in the midst of Hithlum into a great chasm, Cris-Ilfing,4 the Rainbow-cleft, through which a turbulent water ran at last into the western sea. And the name of this chasm was so devised by reason of the rainbow that shimmered ever in the sun in that place, because of the abundance of the spray of the rapids and the waterfalls.
Of the deeds of desperate valour there done, by the chieftains of the noble houses and their warriors, and not least by Tuor, is much told in The Fall of Gondolin; of the death of Rog without the walls; and of the battle of Ecthelion of the Fountain with Gothmog lord of Balrogs in the very square of the king, where each slew the other; and of the defence of the tower of Turgon by the men of his household, until the tower was overthrown; and mighty was its fall and the fall of Turgon in its ruin.

If the Quenta Noldorinwa version used part of the Tales in its narrative, does that makes the Tales obsolete? If the definitive version uses the Tales does that means that the Tales are not discared then?

The idea that you can take bits from the Fall of Gondolin, add to them bits from 'Tuor', written half a century or so later, by a 'different' writer - because Tolkien did change as a man & as a creator - & produce an 'official' version of the story of Gondolin is, in my view, mistaken. Its almost equivalent to taking some scenes from Marlowe's Jew of Malta, & Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice & trying to produce a 'canonical' Elizabethan view of 'Jewishness'', or combining Marlowe's Faustus & Goethe's Faust to get at the 'true' version of the legend. There simply isn't a 'canonical' Silmarillion - its the fox that isn't there. What is there, is JRR Tolkien, a writer who throughout his adult life was telling stories, with many of the same characters & events in them, but with different meanings & intentions. You can no more produce a 'canonical' Silmarillion, by choosing some bits from here, there & eveywhere from his ME writings & casting aside other bits, than you can create a 'canonical' JRRT, by taking some bits from his biology, his academic career, his personal life, his fictional & non fictional writings & rejecting other bits. Tolkien, as I said, is his creative life, the Legendarium, & the Legendarium is Tolkien. There is no 'definitive' version of either.

Actually it is the other way around regarding our work in the Fall of Gondolin. I never used the word "official" in any of my posts nor do we claim that our Revised Silmarillion is "canonical". We have certain standards in which we weight the typescripts and manuscripts of JRRT.
As I have said before, there are some people who are happy with just reading the text, while there are others who want more. It is a good thing that CT didn't share your opinion of trying to make a "Silmarillion", because I would never have know any of it.

What is the purpose of constructing your canon -- whatever it may be? Are you striving for a comprehensive version of Middle-Earth or a truthful one? That is, are you trying get it all, or are you trying to get it right?

A truthful version of ME. What is that? How would I know if I get it right? We just have a set of principles and we strive to make a "more complete" Silmarillion that takes into account some of the latter ideas of JRRT.