I think it also points to the serious lack of discussion going on...outside BFC.
Here it is the same 12 or so people.
It seems like you diminish the value of this site by both underestimating the number of participants - by orders of magnitude - or even attempting to quantify what should be a qualitative scale of judgement in the first place. Though admittedly I have done similar analyses of the CMBN and CMSF sites and forum stats, but not to comment on the value of the site. I would not write off the gamesquad forum as "just a dozen people" or, frankly, consider it unimportant. A community is what one makes of it. All the sites are part of a tapestry.
Wargamer has maybe 6 pages of a dozen different people. There is a little discussion at ACG, TheBlitz, a couple other CM1 ladder sites. But I have yet to see any significant discssion yet. And there is very little blog and press coverage.
This in contrast to CMSF and even the Marine module.
I took a peek at a Few Good Men after someone mentioned at BFC that POS had reviewed the game there. I couldn't find the review but I did find some spirited discussion. I guess if I wanted to dismiss the site as "just a dozen or so people" I could, but I have no idea how many people lurk there - i.e. read the site regularly without posting, or only post infrequently. I'm not sure it matters much. As I said above, the community is more than just the number of people showing themselves on the sites you happen to know about.
We made some pretty interesting conclusions about CM:SF based on the relative lack of interest we perceived on community sites, but I think we backed those up with other observable data - rapidly declining retail price, review ratings in the mainstream hobby press, third party scenario offerings, etc. That kind of data is not yet observable for CM:BN, and some of it may never be - i.e. retail price, given that at present, it appears to remain a BFC-only purchase.
Steve has addressed the lack of reviews in a fairly reasonable post; certainly the landscape has changed. I suspect there is more to it - he did not indicate whether or not they considered submitting the game for review to 'mainstream' hobby sites (EDIT - actually he may have, I'd have to reread his post), but did indicate how few of those there appear to be now. It's a trend that is prevalent in all kinds of reporting; with "Twitter" feeds being reported by local weathermen (yeah - I want to know what my neighbour 'thinks' the weather will be rather than having a trained meteorologist just tell me what his forecast model predicts) I think he has a point.
I don't disagree that the perception of a lack of serious discussion about the game may be accurate, but I don't think it has to do with the game. Serious discussion is simply dying out all over the place in favour of uninformed ranting, sound bytes and kneejerking. Steve has suggested some serious reviews are in the offing. In the meantime, apparently POS - that unbiased, rational observer of tactical combat in the 20th Century - has apparently weighed in with what are I am sure stunning screenshots.
If you can find them. And can get past the sig lines and avatars, which of course are the hallmarks of a site designed for serious discourse.