In article <35199678.1069ABE5@DeathsDoor.REMOVETHIScom>, you say...
>
I decided to look for better numbers. I still maintain that the way to get the most credible numbers for a pagan population is to look at Usenet. Mainly, because there are obtainable numbers.

Books are indicative, but a lot of people get started via public library if they can find one with available books. (harder than they sound, they disappear)

Up until a couple of years ago, an informal network of cooperating sysadmins used a sampling program to determine the number of Usenet readers, posters, usage, etc. on Usenet, these were combined into "Arbitron" ratings for all the newsgroups they could find. Here's the latest one I could get for alt.pagan:

Here's another note on problems with the previous Arbitron ratings: "The reason for this revision is that Brian Reid's raw arbitron figures contain a major (fortunately reversible) statistical error that severely undercounts the readership of most groups. I have excluded clearly local/regional hierarchies from this revised list because they suffer from an even more egregarious sampling error that radically overestimates their worldwide readership. They can be found in a companion posting to this one."

        #readers in sample          #Usenet readers who read...     
#est readers    messages/mo                
  73389   397 58%  4247    6.2    21%   0.28  0.7% alt.pagan

The most interesting numbers from this are the legended ones. For full text, go to: Jul 95 Usenet Arbitron Report.

The newest work I could find in this area is The Usenet Project, which statistically analyzes posting activity on the Usenet newsgroup.

Here are some numbers:
Netscan Analyzer Results
Daterange: 3/12/98 to 3/26/98 (note - 2 week period) Combined Activity Over All Selected
Groups: Total number of posts: 7667
Total number of posters: 321

posts per month - extrapolated estimate - 15334

Let's assume that the ratio of posts to users stayed constant between 1995 and now.
15334/4247=3.6 3.6 * 73389 = about 265K .

I used alt.pagan as the selected group in this case, I'm still learning how to use the thing, it would be best to combine the number of posters from alt.pagan, srp, alt.magick.* , alt.witchcraft.* newsgroups MINUS OVERLAP to find out how many people combined are posting to these newsgroups. More to the point, I've been reading the Arbitron numbers for newsgroups that interest me over the years, and I have some clue as to what typical numbers look like.

Can the numbers be extrapolated from posters to actual living, breathing pagans, on/offline worldwide? Of course. Accuracy level? Only the Goddess knows, and She doesn't have a personal Web site. :-) Yet.

Extrapolations:
1. You saw where I got the 265K estimate. Perhaps one could add as many as an extra 50% to cover srp and other ngs, (BTW, a look at s.r.p. stats show: Total number of posts: 578 - say 1140/mo Total number of posters: 178)

Haven't figured out how to handle crossposting.)
265K * 1.5 = 400K

I'm trying to keep as few significant digits in these answers as possible because of... obvious methodology problems.

2. Discount the number of active users for those who are around for reasons other than being pagan. 20% seems reasonable. 400K * .8 = 320K

Let's be conservative and say that the pagan / occult newsgroups have a total readership of about 300K worldwide.

Now, let's guess at the ratio of pagan users of Usenet to the whole pagan population in the developed countries. I would personally guess that the average pagan user of the Internet, particularly the ones who got online in the last couple of years DON'T know Usenet exists, I'd very much to see a survey done on this.

Let's say that for every pagan / occult newsgroup reader, there are 10 pagans who don't use the newsgroups... (There are a whole lot of simplifications here... let's start that from my direct observations, WE are the early adopters of new communications technology as compared to any other religions... on the discount side, worldwide, 1/16 of the population is connected to the Internet (recent Wired News article)

10 x 300k = 3,000,000

It's a bit hard to believe, but it's a small enough percentage of the population to make sense.

Let's say that 80% of the pagans are in the US...

that would make 2,400,000 US pagans.

Sounds like a lot of people, but that's less than 1% of the population. Actually, the probable number of pagan Usenet newsgroup users to the number of pagan NON usenet users probably supports a larger number than 2.4 million.

The holes in this analysis are big enough to fly a broomstick through, but at least they are based on numbers available to everyone online, and they give suggestions for refinements of the methodology adequate to provide usable numbers sooner or later.

B*B, A.Lizard