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I think you're being too pessimistic about Esperanto:
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_Wikipedias
[2] http://www.aaie.us/wordpress/?page\_id=42
[4] http://www.esperanto.net/veb/faq-5.html
[5] https://www.duolingo.com/course/eo/en/Learn-Esperanto-Online
[6] http://www.ladocumentationfrancaise.fr/rapports-publics/054000678/index.shtml
[7] https://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto\_en\_universitatoj
[8] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/30/AR2007033000824.html
[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaedeutic\_value\_of\_Esperanto
[10] 'A language teaching experiment', Canadian Modern Language Review 22.1: 26–28
[11] http://e-d-e.org
I don't see how those numbers, even if correct, mean that I'm being too pessimistic about Esperanto. I didn't deny that some people speak it, or that it's easy to learn. I said I don't see any plausible pathway by which it becomes widely enough used to be a lingua franca.
The most interesting of those figures is the one about how many hours it takes to learn various languages. The link you gave doesn't offer any direct support for the startling claim you make (apparently saying that Esperanto is 10x easier to learn than English); rather, it quotes someone e... (read more)