What groups should you / must you disclose?

Question

On the form to apply for US citizenship (N-400) Part 11, item 9A asks:

 Have you ever been a member of, involved in, or in any way associated with, any organizations, 
 associations, fund, foundation, party, club, society or similar group in the United States
 or in any other location in the world?

And then 9B asks you to list those groups (name, purpose and dates).

That seems really broad. What would or would not count here? Obviously membership in a political organization would, but presumably a local book club wouldn't? And surely various internet forums can't count!?! Where's the line here?

Answer 1

Wanted to come back and add an answer based on my experience during my interview. The interviewer basically said that those questions are really there to give you a chance to lie to them. A lie on your N-400 could be used as grounds to strip you of your citizenship at a later date (de-naturalization).

What I took from this is that they probably don't really care what you put on there and probably aren't going to devote time or resources to trying to look any deeper unless you give them a reason to want to. For example, you get your citizenship and then go on a crime spree. In addition to whatever punishments you get for your crime spree, CIS might crack open your file again and look at all the answers you gave and double check.

Answer 2

From the way it was explained to me once before: This question has to do with the one immediately below it.

So the information that is being looked for is any charitable, political, professional organizations. To give some examples Alumni associations, ACM, Rotary Clubs, Knights of Columbus, would qualify.

Other organizations would be Young Pioneers, Komsomol or similar...