The reason groups of nerds do better at than the people actually getting paid to do it comes down to the fact that they actually care about it, whereas the people getting paid to do it don't, beyond the fact they are getting paid, and perhaps the woke ones feeling good about spreading the "message."
I think people get a HUGE amount of rose-colored glasses about how incredibly shitty most of the Star Wars EU content was, and this is exactly why. It's also specifically why -- as I've criticized before -- there was very rarely any coherent worldbuilding or coherent advancement of the overall plot and state of the galaxy, just blandly formulaic stories about the same handful of Rebel characters saving the day again and again from crisis-of-the-day.
(Never mind that they were supposedly the recognized government of the "majority" of the galaxy throughout most of the EU. No fleets or armies for you, New Republic!)