I'm less well-versed on the pros and cons of AI in this context, especially compared to some folks here like Jeff and others. I did want to say, however, that I can't tell you how many times I've pointed a new or learning caller to the archives of this list. Particularly, the archives are amazing for folks who are most interested in calling rarely at non-dance-oriented community events, and/or who live farther away from established contra dance communities (shout out to the folks on this list who sometimes chime in from Australia!). I know the barrier of making a free account seems small, but when it's yet another thing to figure out as a new ONS caller, I think it will significantly impact the accessibility of the archives. 

Thank you Seth and Chris, and any lurking CDSS Board Members (past or present!) for continuing to support this resource with care and thoughtfulness. It really is invaluable, and I hope that most of us remember to not take it for granted!

Ang

On Mon, Aug 4, 2025 at 12:22 PM Joe Harrington via Contra Callers <contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
I'm with Jeff on this one.  Please don't close the list archives.

I've tried as recently as yesterday to come up with AI queries for programming contra dances.  No luck, yet!  The models will have to train on our discussions of good programming, the content of dances, etc., before that works.  The bad models are already being abandoned in favor of better ones that give more accurate/truthful/cited responses.  That's how markets work.

The one downside I see is the potential for AI models to model us as individuals, to sell predictions of our behavior and knowledge of our associates to advertisers, companies, nefarious governments, and worse.  But, unless a person completely withdraws from online, they will succeed in this one way or the other.  That's an individual choice very much like deciding not to use credit cards (you can do it, but you miss out on a lot).  If someone makes that choice, they can still follow along in the discussions and benefit from them, even if they decide not to contribute.

Please keep the lists open!  At the very least, you should pose the item as a question, poll us, and follow the will of the group, rather than presenting an all-but-fait-accompli, which is the appearance here.

I would particularly avoid any decision that is irreversible.  If the service will not let us make the archives public once they are private, use another service!  There are many out there.  (I'm not saying it's a good idea to make a list public that was private, I'm saying it should be up to the members, not the service, whether to do so.)

Thanks,

--jh--
Joe Harrington
Contra dance caller and DJ
Organizer, Orlando Contra Dance
orlandocontra.org
FB: Orlando Contra Dance Community
Ig: orlandocontradance
contradancerjoe@gmail.com


On Mon, Aug 4, 2025 at 11:51 AM Jeff Kaufman via Contra Callers <contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
I'm strongly in favor of keeping the archives public: I think AI bots training on our archives is a *good* thing.

Historically, the way people found this sort of information was searching.  They would type in things like "how do I call contra dances", "traditional dances for families", "equal turn dances with contra corners", etc, the callers list would show up, they would click through and read things.  This still happens, but we're very quickly moving to a world where instead people ask questions to chatgpt etc.  When people do that, I think we'd rather them have as good information as possible, which means it's better for the list archives to be included in the training data for these models.

There are definitely downsides, especially with current models that do a lot of making things up and don't link you through to the source of the information, but I think these are mostly temporary: combining the best of models and traditional search is a problem people are working hard on solving.

Jeff

On Mon, Aug 4, 2025 at 11:36 AM Seth Seeger via Contra Callers <contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
Hi Mary,

The "Free for 30 days" that you see is a tier of service for the over all list.  CDSS is funding this community so that we can afford the premium level service.

However, individual user accounts on the site are always free.  (Only the list get costs money, not the individuals.)

Seth

On Aug 4, 2025, at 11:06 AM, Mary Keith Eustis <keustis06@gmail.com> wrote:

It seems the free account is only for 30 days. Am I missing something?

Keith Eustis 

On Mon, Aug 4, 2025, 11:02 AM Seth Seeger via Contra Callers <contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
Dear list members,

Since the beginning, the archives for this list have been public.  This was an effort to make information easier to search, to find, to link to, and to share.  However, the days of free information online have changed.  AI bots are now scraping the web for data to train on and privacy is more of an issue.

As we move to groups.io, Chris and I would like to make the archives private.  The biggest reasons are member privacy and to protect us from AI training/scraping.  This means that you’ll need a free account on the new site to view the archives.

We feel this is a good change for our community.  Since the only barrier to the archives would be subscribing, we think this is a reasonable trade off between privacy and accessibility.

If you have concerns about this change, please reply!  (Once we make the archives at groups.io private, we cannot make them public again later.)

Thank you,
Seth & Chris
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