Is the Aeclectic Tarot Forum gone?

[Siri5]

Hi, sorry if this is not allowed or in the wrong place, and feel free to delete if so.

 

Just wondering if anyone knows what is happening to the Aeclectic Tarot Forum. I know it's no longer active, but the old posts were always accessible and I often read some of the threads as they are so full of information and advice. The past two days it's come up with an error message so I'm wondering if the forum is now completely gone. Does anyone know more?

[gregory]

Old posts are still available, but the search function - isn't great.

 

It's coming up fine for me - maybe clear your cache ? https://www.tarotforum.net But I see what you mean - some pages are throwing up an error. Solandia is still adding to it, though.

 

You could email Solandia if you are having issues - https://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/contact.shtml

 

Actually as I still have her email, I have done....

 

 

Edited June 8 by gregory

[Siri5]

Thank you so much, that’s really helpful. i really hope  the posts will remain up, it’s an amazing resource. 

[gregory]

Have you tried using the wayback machine for now ?

 

https://web.archive.org/web/20250412044717/https://www.tarotforum.net/

[DanielJUK]

As Aeclectic is archived now and not active, it's fine to talk about it here and we sprung from it. 

We have no connections to it though, so your best bet is contacting Solandia. Maybe some pages have issues or a forum software problem, hopefully she will fix it in future. She does maintain it as an archive of the community, let's hope those pages come back 🙂 

[katrinka]

I was getting weird errors. The 'https' had a line through it and I got this:

 

Oddly, I changed 'https' to 'http' and it appears to be working fine now.

You have to remember the site is a dinosaur and everything might not be compatible with out newfangled 'puters.
Plus I'm not worried about privacy there. I seriously doubt Solandia is going to steal my passwords and debit card information. 

[fire cat pickles]

Also, I have better luck using my laptop than phone FWIW.

[gregory]

It still isn't right - I have emailed Solandia (actually, maybe I should check my email... - no, nothing yet.)

[Siri5]

Thanks everyone, fingers crossed it's fixable! 

 

[gregory]

It is: Solandia says

 

Quote

I've been having a lot of problems in the last week with people trying to download the entire forum (presumably to use for their own AI projects), and that's been slowing down page loading and giving that error. 

 

I'm working on fixing it - the forum posts are still there and will be accessible again soon!

 

[katrinka]

Some of those posts were well researched, people put work into them.  Now "people (are) trying to download the entire forum (presumably to use for their own AI projects)."
Those posts weren't written with any forewarning that AI would be A Thing someday.

I'm reminded of Lady & The Tramp. When that movie was made in the 50's, nobody saw VHS coming.
So of course Disney put the movie out on tape in the 80's and didn't pay Peggy Lee for her music and other contributions.
Peggy Lee fought Disney in court - and won.  

Of course court is expensive and aggravating, so here's an interesting little tool that can be used to protect art. Hopefully there will be one for writing soon, too.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/27/new-tool-lets-artists-poison-their-artwork-to-deter-ai-companies.html

Edited June 9 by katrinka

[JoyousGirl]

6 hours ago, katrinka said:

"to use for their own AI projects)."

 

This is exactly why I've added a copyright notice at the bottom of my posts - it applies in anterior too, with regard to Aeclectic. Nobody reads terms and conditions these days, but there's a risk of them owning your IP/ private information.  Sometimes you have to agree to something to be able to access it, but nobody really reads T&Cs - or understands them.  So a (c) notice should be included somewhere to indicate you don't agree with all T&Cs. I don't know the legalities.

 

I noticed a lot of people signing up here and not posting anything, sometimes I'll notice people are 'fishing'. Some people want to take and scrape and ultimately cheapen the whole art and craft of reading. It's dehumanising and socially destructive.

 

Many of us here have 30+ years of intellectual property gained from studying and thinking (and investments to support that). I am not giving someone any right to come along and take it and profit from my work - they'll have to pay for it. AI is a serious destabilisation mechanism, not just socially, but economically. 

Rant over

 

Edited June 9 by JoyousGirl

[FindYourSovereignty]

8 hours ago, katrinka said:

Some of those posts were well researched, people put work into them.  Now "people (are) trying to download the entire forum (presumably to use for their own AI projects)."

 

I do not like this...

 

1 hour ago, JoyousGirl said:

This is exactly why I've added a copyright notice at the bottom of my posts

 

Does this actually stop it from happening or is it just a way to go to court if you somehow discover your words being used?

 

It has always bothered me that we have to 'opt-out' of email lists, public sesrch records, and solicitations, etc. This feels similar. The forums have to put into place all these ai scrapping preventative measures and it still is not a guarantee. 🙁

[katrinka]

5 hours ago, FindYourSovereignty said:

Does this actually stop it from happening

No. I have copyright notices on my blogs and people plagiarize my stuff pretty regularly. I don't put it on the bottom of every post, but it's there. If they're sifting through my blog for content, I know they see it.

But I've never had to go to court. A DMCA does the trick. Sometimes I post it right there in their comments where everybody can see it and know they stole content. 

But that's just for people copypasting my stuff. AI would be another matter entirely.

I'm confident that we'll have something similar to the poisoned art tech soon. Everything is measure-countermeasure. Remember how it was with phones? Caller ID came out, so then people got the option to call privately (anonymously), then you could set your phone to reject private calls, etc. 

Edited June 10 by katrinka

[gregory]

I have no idea what the rules/T&C are here; I do seem to recall a discussion on AT about it, and I THINK - as AT was set up before people got so internet-savvy, it wasn't written in, as the possibility never occurred to anyone. I imagine that is the case, as Solandia has put out a couple of books with - I think - anonymised bits from the forum in. I don't know that for sure, as I didn't buy them....

 

Here a strap-line says: Tarot, Tea, & Me Copyright © Little Fang Tarot. All Rights Reserved.

 

I can't find anything that says our posts are our own. (I have to say I don't actually care, but for those who do....)

[FindYourSovereignty]

3 hours ago, katrinka said:

I'm confident that we'll have something similar to the poisoned art tech soon. Everything is measure-countermeasure. Remember how it was with phones? Caller ID came out, so then people got the option to call privately (anonymously), then you could set your phone to reject private calls, etc. 

 

Yes, true. It annoys me that it is automatically public vs automatically private and people have to jump through hoops to use a service without their information becoming a commodity. 

 

3 hours ago, katrinka said:

No. I have copyright notices on my blogs and people plagiarize my stuff pretty regularly. I don't put it on the bottom of every post, but it's there. If they're sifting through my blog for content, I know they see it.

But I've never had to go to court. A DMCA does the trick. Sometimes I post it right there in their comments where everybody can see it and know they stole content.

 

I thought the copyright in the footer of the site was supposed to cover everything, but I've recently noticed on some sites very in-your-face "don't copy anything from my site" and some of them are the biggest fans of using AI. 🤦🏻‍♀️

 

2 hours ago, gregory said:

I can't find anything that says our posts are our own. (I have to say I don't actually care, but for those who do....)

 

Hmmm.... I think it would be good to know this. Specifically in the private journal area. 

 

[DanielJUK]

I think she might be having a real problem with Aeclectic now. You can't really leave out of date and no longer supported forums, galleries, blogs or any server software like that online because it will be hacked. There are security issues with server software all the time. Like any website with old bbcode in is in danger of malicious scripts, there are loads of forum security vulnerabilities. It's a real problem online these days and sites ending up hacked.

 

If I remember Aeclectic used VBulletin and they stopped developing it and releasing updates at the end of 2017. Solandia closed the site 6 months before, so maybe that is one reason it happened. The threads I presume still run on it but no one has access but her, but it's probably a real security headache for her now. There have been no versions or updates since that year. So the AI scooping could be impacting the site because it has no security against that sort of thing. You can only add server-side protections.

 

We pay for a maintenance package to keep this place up to date, and there are many security updates during the year, fixing problems and vulnerabilities. There are also protections if someone starts taking a lot of data or scraping the place in one go. But like any site, it's really difficult to stop AI taking data. The only solution right now is to have a tag on pages to not take for AI, literally the only solution and probably only the google one obeys that. I do believe this will be a legal issue later with authors and creators, there is a huge different from consenting to search engines and not. It seems ethically wrong there is no formal opt out or consent mechanism as part of it.

 

I will try to find out about post ownership. However members can request to delete their accounts (but it makes us sad 😭) and all personal identifying data is deleted from the servers. Also at the same time we delete journals and any personal threads like a deck art thread. However the forum posts remain but with no identification and are listed under "Guest".

[gregory]

1 hour ago, DanielJUK said:

I think she might be having a real problem with Aeclectic now. You can't really leave out of date and no longer supported forums, galleries, blogs or any server software like that online because it will be hacked. There are security issues with server software all the time. Like any website with old bbcode in is in danger of malicious scripts, there are loads of forum security vulnerabilities. It's a real problem online these days and sites ending up hacked.

 

If I remember Aeclectic used VBulletin and they stopped developing it and releasing updates at the end of 2017. Solandia closed the site 6 months before, so maybe that is one reason it happened. The threads I presume still run on it but no one has access but her, but it's probably a real security headache for her now. There have been no versions or updates since that year. So the AI scooping could be impacting the site because it has no security against that sort of thing. You can only add server-side protections.

 

 

She has excellent IT skills, and I think it is fairly well locked (it is in any event on the wayback.) I can't find what software it is now sitting on; from the sourcecode;she may well have stripped all that out, given that one cannot post to it. And it certainly wasn't the main reason she shut it down; she said at the time she was just burned out.

 

About copyright: It has this strap line:

 

[katrinka]

3 hours ago, FindYourSovereignty said:

I thought the copyright in the footer of the site was supposed to cover everything, but I've recently noticed on some sites very in-your-face "don't copy anything from my site" and some of them are the biggest fans of using AI. 🤦🏻‍♀️

They probably don't realize how insidious it is. A lot of people don't think. (I won't get political here, but well, you know...)
 

3 hours ago, FindYourSovereignty said:

Hmmm.... I think it would be good to know this. Specifically in the private journal area. 

Don't quote me on this, but I think I read somewhere that your posts become the property of the forum. If that's the case, if your content here gets copied somewhere you'd have to get LF to get it taken down.

But I've also read that it's still yours. That makes sense, blog posts don't become the property of wordpress or blogger.

If you leave or get banned, you can request that your content be deleted. Whether that actually happens or not is another story.

The laws just aren't clear. Technology has been moving too fast for humans to keep up.
 

2 hours ago, DanielJUK said:

You can't really leave out of date and no longer supported forums, galleries, blogs or any server software like that online because it will be hacked. There are security issues with server software all the time. Like any website with old bbcode in is in danger of malicious scripts, there are loads of forum security vulnerabilities. It's a real problem online these days and sites ending up hacked.

 

Anything "old" is vulnerable. I had to stop using the Pale Moon browser when it was no longer supported. Nobody stole my identity or any of that, the browser just didn't work well after that.
 

2 hours ago, DanielJUK said:

It seems ethically wrong there is no formal opt out or consent mechanism as part of it.

 

It's the wild wild west. No rule of law. We're going to have to wait for a court case to set a precedent, I think.
 

2 hours ago, DanielJUK said:

However members can request to delete their accounts (but it makes us sad 😭) and all personal identifying data is deleted from the servers. Also at the same time we delete journals and any personal threads like a deck art thread. However the forum posts remain but with no identification and are listed under "Guest".

Yes, and while the forum posts tend not to be personal and the majority of them are just chatter, some of them are meticulously researched. They were work. And if I know a person well enough, I can identify their work even though it's listed under Guest. If I can recall a particular word or phrase that was used, I can find them with the search function.

OTOH, I've posted things here and cross posted bits at my blog, and so far LF hasn't come after me with a meat cleaver, lol. Nothing is clear. We just do the best we can and try not to be jerks.

 

1 hour ago, gregory said:

About copyright: It has this strap line:

 

There's a lot of content there. I'm sure plenty of dilettantes have stolen content over the years. Not just for blogs but for books, for profit. Getting all that shut down must be a fulltime job in itself.

 

[gregory]

44 minutes ago, katrinka said:

There's a lot of content there. I'm sure plenty of dilettantes have stolen content over the years. Not just for blogs but for books, for profit. Getting all that shut down must be a fulltime job in itself.

 

Oh they have. I can think of several people who have gone after others for re-using content they copied from AT.

[katrinka]

Just a heads up, what gets stolen is mostly instructional stuff. My clickable Grand Jeu Constellations and my Kipperkarten Primer at my old blog have been stolen many more times than other posts I've made. I left them up, but I'm careful not to make any more posts like that.

 

Kapherus does a lot of posts on card meanings and the like, and his work gets plagiarized a lot. Years ago, he made a PDF, I think it was called A Playing Card Readers Notebook. He said everybody was free to copy and share it as long as he was credited as the author. He wants to teach. But people won't even do that. They present it like it's their own work. It really makes no sense. Nobody gets rich off this stuff and most of the people walking this earth aren't going to be impressed. I can read cards, a lot of y'all can read cards, hardly anybody cares. Why would anybody pretend they know how to read cards?

 

52 minutes ago, gregory said:

Oh they have. I can think of several people who have gone after others for re-using content they copied from AT.

If the forum posters, not Solandia, are doing that, I'm guessing our posts are still ours?
Or sort of. The forum TOS might say otherwise. 

When I was at Keen, they had a blog there. Posting at the blog occasionally was good for getting more calls. But to save work, a lot of us would post blog entries copied from our regular blogs at wordpress or blogger, and Keen would send us a notice that our regular blog was violating copyright. They basically said we plagiarized ourselves.  

The internet is nuts. 

Edited June 10 by katrinka

[Little Fang]

In general, I have no interest in taking ownership of anybody's content here, and I don't claim that anything you post becomes property of the forum.

If there were a need/desire to use a member's content for promotional purposes, I'd seek permission.

 

Granted, anything posted on the public side can be seen by those outside of our community, and while I hope it won't be stolen, it's the risk you take on the internet. 😞

At that point, we'd have to take that on a case-by-case basis to see if we can get them to discontinue use.

[Siri5]

Great discussion this has sparked around copyright and AI - I’ve not contributed but have been reading with interest. 
 

just to say - I’ve managed to get into a couple of Aeclectic forum posts just now and the reist time it triggered a notification where I had to confirm that I was a real person. I’ve never got this before when I’ve accessed forum posts so I’m guessing this might be a sign that Solandia has found a fix?