Forgive me, Morrus, as I suspect you won't disagree with what I'm going to say. But I'm a nerd. And perhaps to help clarify the conversation for others:
Sample sizes aren't in and of themselves statistically significant. The question is whether the sample size is large enough to give a statistically meaningful result, which is I'm sure what you mean. So I suspect what you are saying is that EnWorld has a large enough active forum membership to theoretically provide a large enough sample size to do meaningful tests of the population as a whole. I'm sure that's true.
But, as you pointed out, whether results from a messageboard are meaningful for the inferences WotC would presumably want (i.e., their consumer base as a whole) is a much more difficult question.
1) Active participants on a messageboard my not be a representative sample. I would hypothesize that this is likely the case-- though only a proper study involving a wider consumer base could verify this. But if it isn't representative, then others here might well be right that responses here aren't meaningful for WotC in determining their strategy (and I know you made this point in your first post).
2) Even if the active population as a whole is large enough for a meaningful sample, the participants in a given thread might not be. If it truly is 50 posters, then the chances of that sample being a good one drop considerably, especially given the added self-selection.
3) For survey results (though I'm not an expert on these), I suspect the way the survey is conducted is critically important for the reliability of the results. The back and forth of a messageboard threads, I suspect, is not an environment to get reliable results.
But it strikes me that the argument is conflating two points-- 1) Can we get a good representation of how consumers will react from the messageboard; and 2) Is it important that information is making its way to this part of the community without proper PR massaging.
The only relationship between those questions is whether the messageboard community is representative of the community as a whole in two respects:
1) Is the wider consumer base also consuming this information?
2) If so, are they reacting the same way if they do?
Neither question is answerable without data. But as to #1-- It's a hypothesis, and I don't have any data to back it. But I very much doubt most potential D&D buyers are paying much attention to the occasional leak on B&N or from thalmin. If I'm right, then the argument that WotC has no incentive to actively control it is sound. Heck, they might have a disincentive, since it might compromise their overall strategy. Sure, it'd be nice if they had control over every piece of info that comes out. Maybe they should. But maybe it doesn't matter at this scale.
Anyway, my apologies for the wall of text. They are the sad musings of an obsessive data nerd.
AD
p.s. hours later, I read this and can't believe I wrote this whole thing in a thread about release dates. Yikes. I leave it only because I haven't the heart to delete my longest post ever.
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