Talk:Affinity group

Untitled
The definition of an "affinity group" is "a group in which each member knows the, for the situation interesting, views of the other members" (or similar). I think this definition is not adequately put forward in the article. The article might infact through this nurture the common, and dangerous, misconception that affinity has anything to do with friendship.


 * could you please sign your comments in the future using ~ ? i don't understand the definition you have provided -- it doesn't appear to work grammatically even. having said that, i note that the article only makes one reference to friends or friendship and then states that ags are "often made up of trusted friends". while in theory, an ag should be built on a more 'professional' concept of trust i think in practice that friendship is, as the article states, "often" the binding factor... and wikipedia exists to be descriptive, rather than prescriptive. i must state, though, that i fully agree with your assesment (i certainly don't regard half the people in my ag as friends!). lastly, i would like to remind you that wikipedia is open to editing by anyone, including yourself! if you see a problem or a flaw, feel free to jump in and fix it! -- frymaster 16:07, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Affinity groups aren't just about direct action
Affinity group is a term which is used outside of the fairly small world of activism. I'll be making edits to reflect that later. Argyriou 19:01, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Argyriou, did you ever make those edits? Because this article is still far too focused upon political pressure groups, rather than the broad and more common definition of the term: "a group -- often with a curtailed membership -- that shares a common interest or goal". Bricology (talk) 04:33, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Messed-up photo caption
The caption on the page says that the people pictured were convicted on Dec. 4, 2002 as a result of protesting the war in Iraq. But the war in Iraq didn't even begin until 2003. I don't know these people, but perhaps whoever does can correct the caption. Dablaze 19:07, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
 * and only 6 months later it gets fixed. collateral damage was protesting the impending war in iraq when they were arrested. i've added that word and provided a nice citation for it too. -- frymaster 15:49, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Merger proposal
Affinity (sociology) has existed as a stub for over a year. I propose that anything useful from Affinity (sociology) be mentioned in Affinity group and that Affinity (sociology) be turned into a redirect to Affinity group. --JWSchmidt 19:24, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
 * hm. my gut reaction is that affinity (sociology) is about a significantly different and much broader concept than affinity group and that the best solution would be to have a strong article on affinity. i suspect that readers who go looking for the sociological theory of affinity and get redirected here might feel that they didn't get the article they were looking for. -- frymaster 19:45, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Fine. Can you provide a list of reliable published sources that can be cited for "sociological theory of affinity"? --JWSchmidt 22:30, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
 * well, i'm not a sociologist so i'm certainly no more versed in that field than you. however, there are two works referenced in the article that sound pretty hefty and they probably have nice bibliographies to start with... -- frymaster 15:58, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Oppose, same reasons as Frymaster. Jacob Haller 00:32, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Is there a difference between Affinity group and Club (organization)? If so, we should address this in the article. If not, we should merge the two.
 * An affinity group is a group formed around a shared interest or common goal, to which individuals formally or informally belong.
 * A club is an association of people united by a common interest or goal.

Thoughts? Rklawton (talk) 22:31, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

Ruhr nuclear power station
I was trying to wikilink the power station but couldn't find it. The nearest thing I could find to the protest was a protest against a proposed nuclear power station in Wyhl in 1975. Does anybody have more information about this? Grim23 ★ 18:10, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Similar Article
Hello, I am a student in a class at Cornell University, and a group of us have been working on creating an article for Employee Resource Groups. Since these pages deal with similar ideas, do you have any advice or input regarding this new article and how it fits in relation to this article on Affinity group? Thank you very much in advance. Commse (talk) 06:41, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

removing politically-specific terminology section
Given that "affinity group" is a far broader category than just political action groups, I've added some information to flesh-out that side of the article. However, there is still a specifically political section (under the heading "Organization") that may be peculiar to political groups. For example, no non-political affinity group with which I'm aware uses organizational terms like "spokescouncil", "cluster" or "vibe watch". Since those terms apply only to a minor subset of affinity groups, I would like to remove that section entirely since, even if one added other organizational terms that would apply to say, knitting circles, the peculiar language of political affinity groups would still carry disproportionate weight. Thoughts? Bricology (talk) 07:51, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

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Aren't there affinity groups that aren't working towards left-wing goals?
I see here anarchists, pacifists, anti-war protesters, black blocs, animal rights, environmental, anti-war, and anti-globalization, lots of protestors of varying degrees of annoyingness and/or effectiveness: why do they mostly seem to lean to the left side of the political spectrum? Is it just because leftists spend a lot more time complaining, or is the article just neglecting other groups? If it weren't for the fact that it's more commonly called a "hate group", wouldn't the KKK or similar organizations be "affinity groups"; they share a common goal. They only "hate black people" (I hear Jews is more accurate in most cases) the same way that anti-globalization types hate corporations and successful people. I think the article focuses entirely too much on protestors of various sorts in general. Why is an "affinity group" not any semi-organized group of people who share a common interest? It even mentions a few other types, such a philately, but then seems to imply they aren't really affinity groups because they "don't as closely fit the model of a NGO". So? What does that have to do with being an affinity group? Is there something missing from the definition? What about shape note singers/scholars/enthusiasts? They form a number of local or regional groups which intermix and form an international society of people who all bond over their common group in shape note music, regardless of other things like politics, age, gender, whatever. How is that not an "affinity group"? They share a common affinity for the music, and form a large, loose whole because of it. No, it doesn't look anything like an NGO, and so what? How does that make it less of an NGO than whatever group of protestors who have formed to sing songs every single day inside the state capital to disrupt all proceedings until the lawfully-elected person that they didn't vote for gets out of office, or whatever other foolishness they want to pull off to make life miserable for those who don't care or don't agree with them. AnnaGoFast (talk) 23:51, 23 January 2018 (UTC)