With that approach I'd be worried about a future in which the archives were
first made private but then no created-by-professionals summary was
actually created.

I'm also pessimistic about a summary capturing the wide range of
perspectives towards these dances that this list has historically
reflected.  Not because of any intent to quash a diversity of opinion, but
simply because that's what this sort of project tends to do.

Jeff

On Mon, Aug 4, 2025 at 8:29 PM Luke Donforth via Contra Callers <
[email protected]> wrote:

> I'm in favor of putting the list in a private archive and having CDSS
> generate a resource(s) for ONS callers and others. I think a
> created-by-professionals summary would be more useful than the
> sprawling archive.
>
> I'll chime in on the survey when that goes around.
>
> On Mon, Aug 4, 2025 at 11:51 AM Jeff Kaufman via Contra Callers <
> [email protected]> 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 <
>> [email protected]> 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 <[email protected]>
>>> 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 <
>>> [email protected]> 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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>>>>
>>>
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>>>
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>
>
> --
> Luke Donforth
> [email protected]
> 802-448-4533
> Click here for publicity information.
> <https://www.uvm.edu/~ldonfort/ContraPublicity/>
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