Given how hostility towards SR6 also turns off new players that bought SR6, those polls cannot be representative unfortunately. Only CGL can say how well SR6 does compared to SR5, and any knowledge I have of said comparison falls strictly behind NDA, which I have no intent to break.
I think the issue Michael points out is an issue with a lot of polls: it's only a good representation of the opinions of who are polled.
Even with the smaller populations, I'm still getting 95% confidence ranges that are +/-10% or even +/-20% for the sample sizes themselves.
So, I can say for sure "X percent of people who participated in the poll said Y."
I can say with less certainty, that "X percent (+/- Y%) of people in Z population say W, with 95% confidence." By including the confidence level, at least, I am being honest with what the results represent.
It would be incredibly irresponsible to say that "X percent of people say Y," if I'm only polling a specific subset of a population (IE, users of three internet communities are not necessarily representative of the SR community as a whole). Not to mention, in a volunteer poll like this there may be bias towards people with strong opinions about something- people who don't care one way or another may not participate.
In an ideal poll, one would also sample some of the other communities listed (Facebook, ShadowRN, RPG Net). Or, they might send out a survey to all purchasers of a product. I didn't really feel like doing the first (I do have a day job), and the second one would require a mailing list of everyone who purchased the product- I don't think even CGL has that. They have a mailing list, but I get the feeling this might be biased in the other direction.
The poll itself does not measure how well the product does. I did include questions about whether someone had bought any CRB prior to 6e, and whether someone had bought a CRB for 6e, but neither of these are going to be useful for determining total sales of 6e. They're not even a good comparison for sales of 6e compared to previous editions, since I said ANY edition (Someone who bought a 1e CRB and never bought another book is in the same category as someone who bought every book for 5e).
You can compare the DTRPG sales of 6e to 5e, but that's going to be tricky even now since a lot of TTRPGs get revenue from the "long tail," basically, the sales that come in months to years after their initial release. You can compare what both books looked like at the 3-month, 6-month, and 1-year mark, but even then that's not going to be reliable since DTRPG was not as prevalent 5-10 years ago. I'm sure 3e is under-represented, if only because if you already have a hard copy of a book, you're less inclined to get a PDF, especially if you no longer play that edition.
The important thing is not to make any wild assumptions. You can state the results of the actual data you got in context. You can provide an estimate on how that relates to a wider population. You absolutely cannot twist it to represent something else, or to make an assertive point about the population as a whole. It's too easy to twist things if you take them out of context.
I disagree that only CGL knows how well a system is received or how well it sells. We can make solid estimates of online sales and how online communities received it.
I don't think anyone is under the impression that all of /r/shadowrun loves 6e, and it's just a couple of weirdos who don't like it. I don't think anyone is under the impression that DTRPG sales aren't an indicator of how well a product is doing. We may not be able to extrapolate total sales from it, but if we see that one book sold over a 1000 copies an DTRPG, and one book sold 50, the book that sold 1000+ copies is
most likely selling better across all platforms than the book that sold 50 copies. Of course, if the book that sold 50 copies was the 3.5e PHB for DND, we can add in the same factors as we did for SR 3e.
Statements like your "Given how hostility towards SR6 also turns off new players that bought SR6," and adzling's anecdotes (Which he marked as anecdotal) aren't the best estimates.
Why this topic keeps coming back month after month, despite there being nothing new to really say except for people going once again 'yeah but I really think SR6 sucks and Shadowrun is dying', as if they WANT the entire franchise to disappear, is beyond me.
If the topic isn't interesting to you, don't participate? I don't think anyone should stop playing 5e just because I don't like it, and if I'm not going to go into threads about 5e and tell them that their conversation is pointless and they should all switch to another edition instead. I thought with it being the 1 year anniversary of 6e's release, it might be an alright time to look at how things have changed.
I doubt this conversation has any effect on the brand as a whole. And honestly, I can't take it seriously whenever anyone talks about an IP being destroyed. CGL isn't "destroying" SR, the community isn't "destroying" SR. Unless Hardy is literally breaking into your house and ripping pages out of your old core rulebooks, they're not going anywhere. I think it's fine to expect quality updates to a product you like, but if you don't like something you don't buy it. Maybe you stick to playing the old stuff, or maybe you move on to some other fandom.
One thing to consider oB is timing.
When 4e came out, it was after almost a 3 year SR dry spell. Yea there was a couple of 'end of line books' (SOTA 2064), but it eas clear they were written while still under FASA.
So there was some goodwill and egerness for anything SR.
Sadly, 4e (original) was filled with errors, and editing FUBARs. It was 4eA that got SR4e praise (if fleeting,) But even 4e had issues (matrix, gun modding, nanotech).
5e got some praise from the "grognards" (like me) for a return to some missing concepts (like deckers actually working)...
But also drew some massive hate as well... (Reddit spend about 6 months coming in to scream bloody murder)...
Now 6e comes out.... and well, I don't own it yet, so I have no comment on its quality.
If you do get it, I recommend the PDF. The german edition is supposed to be better as well, if you speak german of course.
That is definitely something to consider- when 6e was released, there was still a lot of irritation from the community towards CGL. The fact that I even know what the heck the pool renovation thing was about is probably a testament to that: I wasn't around the community at the time, and I don't post all that much on dumpshock. But CGL was already disliked by a lot of /r/shadowrun, which meant that they had a higher bar. And then 6e releases, with the same editing mistakes that 5e had, on top of all the "change bad" things that people will dislike regardless of the rule quality. I also recall a few 5e freelancers being surprised at 6e's release, since they hadn't heard anything about it or been contacted to write it. So, there was more talent loss like after the embezzlement fiasco.
I would say this definitely had some effects on the lore. I'm still irritated that every S-K Johnson goes by Brackhaus, that kind of defeats the purpose of Brackhaus. (The 30 Nights run with 3 different Brackhauses running around was funny, tho).
