Because people simply aren't interested in paying dues to join a club. What benefit do they get, beyond receiving a magazine or newsletter that they probably don't even care about?

Absolutely, Erinja. Your post just underlines my point about the invisibility of Esperantists.

And attendance at club meetings is also very much in decline along with membership of organizations.

I am told that there can be as few as 10 persons attending the London Esperanto Club, yet in such a large and cosmopolitan city, there will certainly be many more people who have learnt some Esperanto.

Incidentally, the number of different languages now being spoken by the inhabitants of London has reached phenomenal proportions. I've read reports that in one class in a London school, you might encounter 20 or more different languages.

Even the annual figures for book sales which should be easy enough to collect from the various 'revendistoj' could be misleading as to the number of competent Esperantists, since it is so easy for someone to learn Esperanto to a reasonably high standard (for example in their student years) and then later have no contact with the movement as the preoccupations of daily life (job and family) take over.

If you could persuade the national Census authorities to add a question as to languages spoken and at what level to the Census, then you might begin to get an answer.

sudanglo:If you could persuade the national Census authorities to add a question as to languages spoken and at what level to the Census, then you might begin to get an answer.

Doesn't this occur already in Britain? In Australia when we have the census I think the topic of languages is covered, however I do not know how the census really works since I was under 18 (and just as blissfully ignorant as I am now) last time it was dished around.

Then again, I guess another problem is that some people may be scared to admit it on the census because it's "not a real language"; this also occurs for "real languages" though as well, with some grouping their own languages in with related ones for various reasons (e.g. Chinese, which may be misinterpreted not as a chinese dialect but as Mandarin by authorities).

Not sure about the Australian census but the US census only asks what language you speak in the home. If you speak Esperanto but it isn't your 'home language', there would be no way to tell based on your census form that you speak any language at all.

Depending on the country, the spoken languages issue is sometimes covered by the census, but not everywhere.
If you're interested, here is an article on that point (and the situation of Eo) in Hungary and Lithuania.

erinja:
I attended an interesting talk by Humphery Tonkin where he discussed this issue, at last summer's US national Esperanto convention. He basically said that the era where people joined clubs and paid dues to participate in their activities is dead and gone, and that we in the Esperanto community need to find a new paradigm to work off of, to keep events funded and to perform some of the functions that our clubs and associations used to perform.

Did he made some proposals how to realize that "change"?

Maybe some proposal could be what's happening at the KEF.

KEF 2009, parto 1(8) | kef slavumas | KEF 9: Drumado & Dancado

My problem with this petition is that it requires people to enter personal information like email and postal addresses online. I'm reluctant to do this because of the prevalence of computer crime, though I don't mind letting personal friends have such information.

Miland:My problem with this petition is that it requires people to enter personal information like email and postal addresses online. I'm reluctant to do this because of the prevalence of computer crime, though I don't mind letting personal friends have such information.

Well, to be honest, I gave them fake email and postal adresses.

sudanglo:

Because people simply aren't interested in paying dues to join a club. What benefit do they get, beyond receiving a magazine or newsletter that they probably don't even care about?

Absolutely, Erinja. Your post just underlines my point about the invisibility of Esperantists.

This dude hits the nail on the head. Why pay obscene amounts to a club?

And I learnt Esperanto to help the world. The clubs in the UK look too small and worthless to me. My time is very valuable so I can't attend meetings to hang around with a bunch of dudes doing nothing.

Although I wouldn't mind an Esperanto squat or anarchist political party... As long as people are using the language to *do something*, not just burn time hanging around for the sake of the language.

Esperanto speakers should stop recruiting and concentrate on generating lots of cool exclusive Esperanto content like movies, books, games, ... It does get a bit boring hearing people hacking out grammar and how to promote Esperanto ALL THE TIME!

100 years of promotion, hmmm. Something isn't working. Try a new tack!

witeowl:

qwertz:I have no idea because I didn't intented that message to be enriching the E-o culture.

And yet you used enrichment as an argument against taking the time to join the petition. I find it ironic for someone to say, "I can't take the time to complete that petition because it doesn't enrich the culture, but I will take the time to write this message against completing that petition even though it doesn't enrich the culture."

I believe we did communicate eccentric face-to-face (de: "aneinander vorbeireden"). What I meant was that I will not spent any time to complete that petition and any petition. Including offline ones. I just grabbed some time period (=15 minutes) from the time efforts for the single steps which are necessary to create an E-o karaoke with Karafun. Btw. Aleksander (filmoj.net aktivulo) also dislike that petition. There is still so much to do - and E-o uloj lists themselves at petition in an information overload space (=Internet). Da fragt man sich manchmal auch: Sag' mal, geht's noch?! (Then someones asked itselves: Pleeese, tell me: Do you folks still function well? Mostly that the police will ask someone who walks (drunken) zick-zack around to check if s/he will find home by itself. It's kind of friendly hint because of someones weird behaviour from a outer view of course. Eeehm, difficult to explain. )

qwertz:I don't understand the motivation behind that statistical counting and petition signing.

Assuming that this signing will take 15 minutes I compare it what I could do in this time to enrich E-o culture. Currently for me that means in detail creating new E-o karaoke. So in 15 minutes I will check if the lyrics I grabbed meet the regarding mp3 file. These is step one of four to create an final E-o karaoke. Just such a lot to do to get at the level of English and other natural language karaoke/sing along pools. Sorry, no time for petition signing.

So what statistical counting is doing to enrich E-o culture?