4 Aug
2025
4 Aug
'25
4:49 p.m.
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(a)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(a)gmail.com
On Mon, Aug 4, 2025 at 11:51 AM Jeff Kaufman via Contra Callers <
contracallers(a)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(a)lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
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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(a)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(a)lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
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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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