He never gave us a glimpse of these details, and you're right that he kept things vague, but that doesn't change the fact that he did create this system which has a mathematical basis in which all the channelers her created fit. Did he bend it from time to time in the series? Sure. Did he have characters make ignorant or arrogant comments that contradicted the actual rules? Sure. But that doesn't mean he didn't know. Given what DomA said, he seemed to know to a very specific degree how strong a channeler was. And he also knew about their Talents, strengths in particular flows, etc. For Aes Sedai, he knew how long they were Novice and Accepted, how old they were, and other minor details most authors don't bother with.

Now, the discussion on strength is purely academic. But at the heart of it has to be the few specific points about strength that Jordan made outside the books. All characters can lie or be mistaken. But when Jordan says something, especially when its something others in Team Jordan have confirmed, you can't wish it away. That has to be the first principle on which you base your theoretical list. Every other quote is open to interpretation. I guarantee you if you took a quote from the books and RJ's quote on the bell curve and pointed the contradiction to him, he would say the character in question was mistaken, or that you're ignoring the implications of skill or knowledge.

And that's precisely the approach Darius and I take to coming up with a strength list. And that's why we were both right years ago to insist that gateway size can't be used to compare male and female strength (which is what Shannow was doing). We were also right to insist that you do have to consider effective strength, not raw strength. I can also remember Shannow insisting on wotmania that effective strength was irrelevant because RJ pulled that out of his hat. And now see how the later parts of the series have totally held that up?

You can continue insisting RJ was wrong or confused. But you have no evidence ot back it up. Darius and I, however, have a system that takes all the quotes into account AND fits with what RJ said. And that's got to be the way to do it.