Talk:Special interest

Since no one fluent in Croatian has stepped forward to do a full translation, I'm posting a very partial translation below based on my knowledge of another slavic language (and very minimal experience with South Slavic linguistics). Hopefully this will either help non-Croatian speakers decide whether this article is likely worth keeping, or better yet save a (probably tiny) bit of labor for a Croatian speaker who does a full translation later.

WARNING: this is a best-effort translation/gloss by someone who does not speak the language. While I'll mark things I'm not at all sure of with ?'s, it's also possible that some things I was quite certain about are translated with the wrong sense of the right word, or completely wrong. Use with caution. Zyqqh 11:13, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Translation of the original Croatian

Pressure groups or interest-groups are groups (non-governmental organizations) that do not want to become the government, but to influence electives in goverment (in making decisions etc.)

Protective groups are groups that fight only for one segment of the society. These can be societies of doctors or professors or societies of ex war-invalides etc. Membership in those groups is reserved for followers only. These groups are usually "insiders"

Promotional groups are, as the name says, fighting to promote some greater cause. They do not promote interest of a segment of a society, but of a mankind as a whole. These groups are Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth etc. These are ecological groups that fight for a mutual benefit of all the people on the planet. Their membership is open for people of all ages, so that they are much more populated than protective groups. The Royal Society for the protection of birds is the biggest interest group with nearly billion members, which is more than number of members in all three national political parties together. These groups are most often "outsiders".

Sometimes it is hard to distinguish these two groups, as sometimes, they do actions characteristic for other groups. For example, lately, BMA (British Medical Association) supports the action against smoking, which is a mutual benefint of all people, not just doctors. Simmilarly, BDA (Britich Dental Association) supports fluorization of water, which is again, on a mutual benefit, not just for dentists.

Sometimes, interest groups become political parties. That is so in Great Britain (in other countries as well) ecological society became Green Party. In order to understand the reason for that, we should take a look in differences between interest groups and political parties. Sometimes political parties look more like interest groups than like parties. For example, Party of Retired people obviously wants to improve the standard of that particular society segment, but oftenly they do not have enough representatives so that they resemble a group more than a party. These are so-called "hybrids" between groups and parties.

Main purpose of interest groups is, as noted before, to influence the government. They do that through their actions denoted as interest groups actions.

Copying to article

I'm going to copy that to article space, get rid of the Croatian, and suggest a merge into Special interest. -- Jmabel | Talk 02:27, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

Now all in advocacy group.

Opinion of 65.45.107.27

I moved the following from the main page to the talk page as it appears more of a complaint and not an addition or change to the article.

65.45.107.27 wrote:

<Labor union, senior citizens and person with disablilities> are not special interest group. The reason is that these group represent a MAJORITY population while interest groups that the represent the powerful represent an extreme MINORITY that control a disproportionate amount of wealth and power.

Those groups that represent the disproportionate of the powerful has distorted the phrase "special interest" to place that meaning against MAJORITY groups and groups that speak out for social and ecomonic justice.>

This is just another reason why slogan 'special interest' is not and cannot be neutral: whoever uses it calls those who are asking "special" as if their interests are not those of the "public" interest.

Merge from Grupe za pritisak

I have moved information from Grupe za pritisak and redirected that article here. I copied the talk from that article to this space too. --Theo (Talk) 19:46, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Not neutral in any language

This slogan 'special interest' has the same problems in any language and should not be used as a literal article title in any of them, for reasons explained in both advocacy and advocacy group.

• If you think that the term is a propaganda term, then discuss that in the article. Don't restructure content to reflect your POV alone; see WP:NPOV. I've reverted your changes. Christopher Parham (talk) 06:43, 17 October 2005 (UTC)