Some people learn Klingon or make savant comparative studies of the grammar and etymology of Tolkien's elvish languages, and others are passionate about Jordan's One Power, or the costumes, or the historical details. It's all harmless enough, and to each his own. Heck, I even know of people who were displeased Brandon used colours for clothes which dyes would require chemical processes the WOT technologicy level can't account for. RJ paid attention to stuff like that, Team Jordan overlooked it. Those people didn't tear their shirt over that, though, merely pointed it out to Sanderson.

If you're honest though, you'll have to admit that Jordan has developped the One Power way beyond his strict needs, dramatically speaking, for the series (exactly like Tolkien over-developped his Elvish languages on the side and just used part of that in his fiction), and worked really hard to make it consistent and pseudo-scientific - justifying your passion for its details - but this still plays a really minimal role in the series itself, except for the relatively very small portion of the WOT fans who are huge OP fanatics like you.

The various details are thrown at us now and then, and they all form this impression of internal consistency, even to readers who don't investigate all the details or collect all the data to then derive elaborate theories and so on... because RJ was usually picking them from his established coherent system (which no doubt had a solid core older than EOTW but also got tons of details elaborated along the way) rather than purely making it up as he went along. The major purpose and advantage of this was the contribution it made to turn the world building in general more realistic. People who don't look into the OP theories don't realize it's a great deal more elaborate than it might appear with superficial reading, that the appearance of coherence comes from the fact it is actually coherent. The logic and coherence let Jordan do fancy things, like challenging previous assumptions, and creating wide gap in the understanding of the OP between third agers and AOL characters. Jordan took a very similar approach to building cultures, using logical grids (can't say personally I find that worked nearly as well as his approach to the OP - there's more behind cultures than internal logic, Jordan's a great deal of logic and not much soul, so they feel gimmicky and a bit shallow). He was an engineer with a strong scientific background, so it's reflected in his style of world building, for good and for ill, much like LOTR reads at times like a philologist's revenge..

Beside the fact Jordan preferred to invent such fictitious systems than reading about others', he wasn't so different from you when it came to looking in details at the One Power, and as long as you guys didn't go into material he wished to keep in reserve in case he might need it to detail a scene at some point or stuff he obviously didn't want to encourage (like the pissing contests about who's stronger than who), he was quite keen to give answers in Q&A about this central element in his worldbuilding. He respected and indulged the fans who were OP fanatics in Q&A. He didn't throw most of that stuff into the series itself though, it was always slave and secondary to the storytelling (the most glaring example is how Jordan dealt with exposition concerning the Cleansing in WH versus the far more elaborate answer he gave in Q&A about it). Tons of the OP theories over the years would have lead not far (sometimes nowhere at all) for absence of evidence or material to contextualize what's explained in the books, but for the fact Jordan gave you tons of little extra details in Q&A to use and incorporate in your theories to help make more sense of it all.

What's quite a bit ironic is that in many ways Sanderson is Jordan's heir in world building and magical systems. If anyone does it "à la Jordan" in his own books (and can answer any little question about them in excruciating details in Q&A) it's him. He does have a similar if not as elaborate background in sciences (He was a chemistry major, IRRC - before he switched after a few years to literature) and shares Jordan's passion for magical systems. Heck, he got that as a young kid from reading WOT. Like Jordan (even more than Jordan, as far as Brandon can tell from the notes. He said Jordan made careful note of what had and hadn't been covered and left himself room to improvise or change things even about the OP) he believes in setting up all the system and rules beforehand then write under their constraints (which Brandon said Jordan didn't always do. He mentionned Jordan had notes to point out when he decided to contradict something he had developped in the notes). BS is also very respectful of Jordan's worldbuilding and the OP in particular. He has read all there is in the notes about it. He said he would be extremely careful about adding any information in the books, and in fact he even planned that his own contribution would be limited mostly to find new applications for existing weaves rather than trying to invent new ones which aren't in the notes (said Jordan sketched in note forms a few ideas he might find a use for too).

So the bottomline is Jordan is dead. Brandon's job is to finish the books, not to turn himself into a substitute RJ to satisfy the hunger of the fans for Q&A. He's generously decided to continue the tradition of Q&A, under pressure from fans (he had early misgivings about doing this). Maria Simmons has also contributed a bit from time to time. Of course Brandon isn't nearly as reliable as Robert Jordan himself. He will never be. He isn't going to study a volume a notes he says is greater than the word count of the series just because some people don't understand he isn't Jordan reborn. Those blunders wouldn't happen if fans were more reasonable with their questions (sticking more to what Brandon himself wrote and issues related to that, for one thing) and didn't constantly put to Brandon questions he can't reasonably be expected to have a full proof answer for (but Sanderson is nice enough not to call them down for doing it and attempt to answer - but people forget his usual disclaimer at the beginning of Q&A that he might make some mistakes and not realize this...). Not just about the OP, but about details from the earlier books that most likely have no bearing at all on the finale and that Brandon is unlikely to have had the time to check in the notes just for fun. And let's be honest, you guys have done your share. I distinctly remember that some of you has put OP/comparative strength questions to Brandon when lists were colliged for Q&A, or have been on his heels to get him to detail a previous answer. Don't blame Sanderson for trying to answer as many questions as he can, even if he'll be wrong sometimes. You find his answers unreliable and "disrespectful". There's an obvious solution to that, and it's to stop reading OP related Q&A. Can you? Ahh... I thought so. You might want to can a bit the hyperbolic rants about disrespect of 20-year fan and all, I understand your disapointement that the days of reliable information outside what's in the books are over with RJ's death, and I share this disappointement over many other areas/aspects of the series in Q&A and the books to an extent, but those rants do make you sound a bit like spoiled and obsessive kids. It would be very different if Brandon had disregarded the rules and made tons of OP related mistakes in the books. So far he hasn't, and he is all too aware of the level of passion for the OP some fans have (which ironically, likely will lead him to include the strict minimum of new material from the notes, only what he is forced to include by the plot, in case he blunders or overlooks that in one line in one book RJ had changed that detail...)

If I were you, I'd already brace myself for solid disappointement regarding the Encyclopedia too, at least if you expect it to contain tons of solid OP theory and stuff like strength ranking and all. There's gonna be more about flowers and books and national costumes and various historical and character minutia than about the OP for sure. Brandon is more talkative than RJ about comparative strength, because he's a RPG geek at heart and loves this stuff (if he didn't lack the time and wasn't legally bound beside, he would most likely have turned himself into a OP specialist using the notes. Can't do that. He must be extremely cautious about what he reveals, and he has books to write and kids to raise). He doesn't seem to share RJ's reservations/bias about being too open about characters' strength (it sounds very much as if RJ didn't see raw strength as the central aspect of a channeler and didn't want the readers to focus on that too much. He didn't want the readers to embrace the AS narrow minded prejudices. He probably didn't want either his Q&A to devolve into OP debates in the vein of "But how come Moridin says this if Graendal is at level X and Sammael at level Y"? That would also created a precedent, and fans would have expected him to know by rote and precisely the strength of each character. And you know, he had reference files for that, he didn't need to remember by rote the strength of every last AS and Forsaken. He just needed a reliable reference when he had to touch on that in the books...). Brandon's not about to bring with him for Q&A RJ's AS notes and spell it all out - he can't possibly do that to answer the other questions, so why should he do it for the ones about OP strength? Why should he be able to answer precisely questions RJ himself didn't answer, perhaps in part because he couldn't without his notes be 100% reliable either? We all saw how it turned out the day he decided to write an elaborate backstory answer about Elaida's rise without checking his notes first. His assistant reading his published answer on the website had to correct him...

Harriet has also forbidden Brandon to give answers to many things which have an answer in the notes but that she knows Jordan never intended to reveal or she feels he's unlikely to have wished to reveal (they even prefer to play safe and stick to his list of things to resolve...). She's not preventing him from revealing them in AMOL only to afterward give these answers in the Encyclopedia. There's also many things in the notes which Jordan may changed as he wrote the series, details which may have been mentionned in the books in passing once and never again and they can't be sure to find. They won't risk putting stuff in the Encyclopedia if it risks destroying the internal consistency of the series (or they'll take again the cope out "some believe that..." rather than simply affirm something, though I doubt Harriet intends to opt for the device used by the BWB for the post-series Encyclopedia. The main reasons RJ forced them to do this is that for him the reliabity/unreliability of any information in the series is an important aspect, and he also didn't want the BWB to tie his hands in any way if he didn't develop a better idea about something later on).