#characterlimit — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #characterlimit, aggregated by home.social.
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@Sean C. @Stefan Bohacek @Blorbo Admin Chicken @Justin Ferrell I've once encountered someone who seemed to suffer from such extreme PTSD that they demanded everyone CW literally absolutely everything. And, of course, the Mastodon way by forciing all these CWs upon absolutely everyone all the same.
Now, I'm not even on Mastodon myself. I'm on Hubzilla which is doing CWs way differently from Mastodon, which has been doing that for longer than Mastodon has even existed, much less has had CWs.
We don't do CWs poster-side. We don't write CWs into the summary field. In fact, the summary field, which Mastodon has been using as a CW field since 2017, is still a summary field here. A summary field makes a whole lot of sense here, for while most Mastodon servers have a hard-coded character limit of 500, Hubzilla doesn't really have any character limit at all.
Also, we can't do Mastodon-style CWs in replies which are called "comments" here. Like on Facebook, like on Tumblr, like on every last blog out there, but very much unlike on Mastodon, our post editor and our comment editors are wholly separate things. The comment editor can't do summaries. Why not? Because, have you ever seen a blog comment with a summary?
No, we have our CWs automatically generated and reader-side. We have a kind of filter called "NSFW" that can automatically hide content behind a CW. It's basically Mastodon's "Hide with a warning", but as its own keyword filter list and seven years before Mastodon introduced "Hide with a warning". (Twelve years actually because Hubzilla inherited that feature from Friendica.)
When we post sensitive or disturbing content, we make sure that those who may not want to see that content have their filters triggered. We do so by making sure that appropriate keywords are in the post text (easy-peasy when you can post over 33,000 times more characters than on Mastodon) or by adding hashtags. The latter is what I do, hence the many hashtags down there.
It's also the only way to have a comment hidden. Again, Hubzilla doesn't have a summary field (= Mastodon CW field) for replies, so it has to rely on people making filters for uncomfortable content.
This could be a thing on Mastodon as well. After all, in October, 2022, Mastodon 4.0 introduced "Hide with a warning" to its filters which does the exact same thing as NSFW on Friendica and Hubzilla: hide messages depending on keywords. However, Mastodon's entire culture was defined in mid-2022 by those who had fled from Twitter in early 2022, so it's based on Mastodon 3.x without "Hide with a warning".
Besides, the vast majority of Mastodon users don't even know that Mastodon has "Hide with a warning", much less what it does. Precious few even seem to know that Mastodon has filters in the first place. And next to nobody knows what the non-Mastodon Fediverse has, nor do they care, also because most Mastodon users don't even know that the Fediverse goes beyond Mastodon, Pixelfed and PeerTube.
In addition, while Hubzilla is all about empowering its users to self-moderate their stream, the "Mastodon experience" is generally perceived as being coddled and pampered all over. By mods who remove unwanted content and by all the other users who hide uncomfortable content. Hide it from everyone all the same, regardless of whether or not someone needs that, just because one person needs it.
So back to the beginning: This person took Mastodon's culture to the absolute extreme. And they demanded that I a) adopted Mastodon's way even though it'd b) clash with Hubzilla's culture which is my native culture and c) exaggerate it to the maximum.
Of course, my suggestion to use "Hide with a warning" filters didn't come to fruition. For one, that would have required an infinite number of individual filters on Mastodon. Besides, that person felt entitled to have protection from literally absolutely any and all kinds of content served to them on a silver platter.
I think I ended up Superblocking them.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Hubzilla #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #MastodonCulture -
@Sean C. @Stefan Bohacek @Blorbo Admin Chicken @Justin Ferrell I've once encountered someone who seemed to suffer from such extreme PTSD that they demanded everyone CW literally absolutely everything. And, of course, the Mastodon way by forciing all these CWs upon absolutely everyone all the same.
Now, I'm not even on Mastodon myself. I'm on Hubzilla which is doing CWs way differently from Mastodon, which has been doing that for longer than Mastodon has even existed, much less has had CWs.
We don't do CWs poster-side. We don't write CWs into the summary field. In fact, the summary field, which Mastodon has been using as a CW field since 2017, is still a summary field here. A summary field makes a whole lot of sense here, for while most Mastodon servers have a hard-coded character limit of 500, Hubzilla doesn't really have any character limit at all.
Also, we can't do Mastodon-style CWs in replies which are called "comments" here. Like on Facebook, like on Tumblr, like on every last blog out there, but very much unlike on Mastodon, our post editor and our comment editors are wholly separate things. The comment editor can't do summaries. Why not? Because, have you ever seen a blog comment with a summary?
No, we have our CWs automatically generated and reader-side. We have a kind of filter called "NSFW" that can automatically hide content behind a CW. It's basically Mastodon's "Hide with a warning", but as its own keyword filter list and seven years before Mastodon introduced "Hide with a warning". (Twelve years actually because Hubzilla inherited that feature from Friendica.)
When we post sensitive or disturbing content, we make sure that those who may not want to see that content have their filters triggered. We do so by making sure that appropriate keywords are in the post text (easy-peasy when you can post over 33,000 times more characters than on Mastodon) or by adding hashtags. The latter is what I do, hence the many hashtags down there.
It's also the only way to have a comment hidden. Again, Hubzilla doesn't have a summary field (= Mastodon CW field) for replies, so it has to rely on people making filters for uncomfortable content.
This could be a thing on Mastodon as well. After all, in October, 2022, Mastodon 4.0 introduced "Hide with a warning" to its filters which does the exact same thing as NSFW on Friendica and Hubzilla: hide messages depending on keywords. However, Mastodon's entire culture was defined in mid-2022 by those who had fled from Twitter in early 2022, so it's based on Mastodon 3.x without "Hide with a warning".
Besides, the vast majority of Mastodon users don't even know that Mastodon has "Hide with a warning", much less what it does. Precious few even seem to know that Mastodon has filters in the first place. And next to nobody knows what the non-Mastodon Fediverse has, nor do they care, also because most Mastodon users don't even know that the Fediverse goes beyond Mastodon, Pixelfed and PeerTube.
In addition, while Hubzilla is all about empowering its users to self-moderate their stream, the "Mastodon experience" is generally perceived as being coddled and pampered all over. By mods who remove unwanted content and by all the other users who hide uncomfortable content. Hide it from everyone all the same, regardless of whether or not someone needs that, just because one person needs it.
So back to the beginning: This person took Mastodon's culture to the absolute extreme. And they demanded that I a) adopted Mastodon's way even though it'd b) clash with Hubzilla's culture which is my native culture and c) exaggerate it to the maximum.
Of course, my suggestion to use "Hide with a warning" filters didn't come to fruition. For one, that would have required an infinite number of individual filters on Mastodon. Besides, that person felt entitled to have protection from literally absolutely any and all kinds of content served to them on a silver platter.
I think I ended up Superblocking them.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Hubzilla #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #MastodonCulture -
@Sean C. @Stefan Bohacek @Blorbo Admin Chicken @Justin Ferrell I've once encountered someone who seemed to suffer from such extreme PTSD that they demanded everyone CW literally absolutely everything. And, of course, the Mastodon way by forciing all these CWs upon absolutely everyone all the same.
Now, I'm not even on Mastodon myself. I'm on Hubzilla which is doing CWs way differently from Mastodon, which has been doing that for longer than Mastodon has even existed, much less has had CWs.
We don't do CWs poster-side. We don't write CWs into the summary field. In fact, the summary field, which Mastodon has been using as a CW field since 2017, is still a summary field here. A summary field makes a whole lot of sense here, for while most Mastodon servers have a hard-coded character limit of 500, Hubzilla doesn't really have any character limit at all.
Also, we can't do Mastodon-style CWs in replies which are called "comments" here. Like on Facebook, like on Tumblr, like on every last blog out there, but very much unlike on Mastodon, our post editor and our comment editors are wholly separate things. The comment editor can't do summaries. Why not? Because, have you ever seen a blog comment with a summary?
No, we have our CWs automatically generated and reader-side. We have a kind of filter called "NSFW" that can automatically hide content behind a CW. It's basically Mastodon's "Hide with a warning", but as its own keyword filter list and seven years before Mastodon introduced "Hide with a warning". (Twelve years actually because Hubzilla inherited that feature from Friendica.)
When we post sensitive or disturbing content, we make sure that those who may not want to see that content have their filters triggered. We do so by making sure that appropriate keywords are in the post text (easy-peasy when you can post over 33,000 times more characters than on Mastodon) or by adding hashtags. The latter is what I do, hence the many hashtags down there.
It's also the only way to have a comment hidden. Again, Hubzilla doesn't have a summary field (= Mastodon CW field) for replies, so it has to rely on people making filters for uncomfortable content.
This could be a thing on Mastodon as well. After all, in October, 2022, Mastodon 4.0 introduced "Hide with a warning" to its filters which does the exact same thing as NSFW on Friendica and Hubzilla: hide messages depending on keywords. However, Mastodon's entire culture was defined in mid-2022 by those who had fled from Twitter in early 2022, so it's based on Mastodon 3.x without "Hide with a warning".
Besides, the vast majority of Mastodon users don't even know that Mastodon has "Hide with a warning", much less what it does. Precious few even seem to know that Mastodon has filters in the first place. And next to nobody knows what the non-Mastodon Fediverse has, nor do they care, also because most Mastodon users don't even know that the Fediverse goes beyond Mastodon, Pixelfed and PeerTube.
In addition, while Hubzilla is all about empowering its users to self-moderate their stream, the "Mastodon experience" is generally perceived as being coddled and pampered all over. By mods who remove unwanted content and by all the other users who hide uncomfortable content. Hide it from everyone all the same, regardless of whether or not someone needs that, just because one person needs it.
So back to the beginning: This person took Mastodon's culture to the absolute extreme. And they demanded that I a) adopted Mastodon's way even though it'd b) clash with Hubzilla's culture which is my native culture and c) exaggerate it to the maximum.
Of course, my suggestion to use "Hide with a warning" filters didn't come to fruition. For one, that would have required an infinite number of individual filters on Mastodon. Besides, that person felt entitled to have protection from literally absolutely any and all kinds of content served to them on a silver platter.
I think I ended up Superblocking them.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Hubzilla #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #MastodonCulture -
@Stefan Bohacek @Blorbo Admin Chicken Yes, I wish more servers had this rule and enforced it.
Officially appointed moderators only go by the server's written rules, and they only enforce them against local users.
The HOA, on the other hand, have some rules in their heads. Everyone has different rules. And they enforce them against everyone, even regardless of where everyone actually is. Like, they attack Friendica users for allegedly misusing the CW field because they neither know that these users are not on Mastodon, much less where they actually are, nor that Mastodon's CW field has been an abstract field on Friendica for seven years longer than it has been a CW field on Mastodon.
This is part of what makes the Fediverse a minefield once your messages start reaching Mastodon.
I can't say that I'll stop being so overly careful with everything and putting such a big effort particulary into image descriptions, summaries/content warnings and hashtags for filter-triggering purposes if more or even most Mastodon servers adopt and enforce this rule. The irony is that this rule actually protects my long hashtag lines.
In fact, rules like these also ought to include that nobody must be policed for writing "too long" posts because there are places in the Fediverse that neither have character limits to worry about nor a character-limiting culture.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Hashtag #Hashtags #HashtagMeta #CWHashtagMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta -
@Stefan Bohacek @Blorbo Admin Chicken Yes, I wish more servers had this rule and enforced it.
Officially appointed moderators only go by the server's written rules, and they only enforce them against local users.
The HOA, on the other hand, have some rules in their heads. Everyone has different rules. And they enforce them against everyone, even regardless of where everyone actually is. Like, they attack Friendica users for allegedly misusing the CW field because they neither know that these users are not on Mastodon, much less where they actually are, nor that Mastodon's CW field has been an abstract field on Friendica for seven years longer than it has been a CW field on Mastodon.
This is part of what makes the Fediverse a minefield once your messages start reaching Mastodon.
I can't say that I'll stop being so overly careful with everything and putting such a big effort particulary into image descriptions, summaries/content warnings and hashtags for filter-triggering purposes if more or even most Mastodon servers adopt and enforce this rule. The irony is that this rule actually protects my long hashtag lines.
In fact, rules like these also ought to include that nobody must be policed for writing "too long" posts because there are places in the Fediverse that neither have character limits to worry about nor a character-limiting culture.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Hashtag #Hashtags #HashtagMeta #CWHashtagMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta -
@Stefan Bohacek @Blorbo Admin Chicken Yes, I wish more servers had this rule and enforced it.
Officially appointed moderators only go by the server's written rules, and they only enforce them against local users.
The HOA, on the other hand, have some rules in their heads. Everyone has different rules. And they enforce them against everyone, even regardless of where everyone actually is. Like, they attack Friendica users for allegedly misusing the CW field because they neither know that these users are not on Mastodon, much less where they actually are, nor that Mastodon's CW field has been an abstract field on Friendica for seven years longer than it has been a CW field on Mastodon.
This is part of what makes the Fediverse a minefield once your messages start reaching Mastodon.
I can't say that I'll stop being so overly careful with everything and putting such a big effort particulary into image descriptions, summaries/content warnings and hashtags for filter-triggering purposes if more or even most Mastodon servers adopt and enforce this rule. The irony is that this rule actually protects my long hashtag lines.
In fact, rules like these also ought to include that nobody must be policed for writing "too long" posts because there are places in the Fediverse that neither have character limits to worry about nor a character-limiting culture.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Hashtag #Hashtags #HashtagMeta #CWHashtagMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta -
@Stefan Bohacek @Blorbo Admin Chicken Yes, I wish more servers had this rule and enforced it.
Officially appointed moderators only go by the server's written rules, and they only enforce them against local users.
The HOA, on the other hand, have some rules in their heads. Everyone has different rules. And they enforce them against everyone, even regardless of where everyone actually is. Like, they attack Friendica users for allegedly misusing the CW field because they neither know that these users are not on Mastodon, much less where they actually are, nor that Mastodon's CW field has been an abstract field on Friendica for seven years longer than it has been a CW field on Mastodon.
This is part of what makes the Fediverse a minefield once your messages start reaching Mastodon.
I can't say that I'll stop being so overly careful with everything and putting such a big effort particulary into image descriptions, summaries/content warnings and hashtags for filter-triggering purposes if more or even most Mastodon servers adopt and enforce this rule. The irony is that this rule actually protects my long hashtag lines.
In fact, rules like these also ought to include that nobody must be policed for writing "too long" posts because there are places in the Fediverse that neither have character limits to worry about nor a character-limiting culture.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Hashtag #Hashtags #HashtagMeta #CWHashtagMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta -
@Stefan Bohacek @Blorbo Admin Chicken Yes, I wish more servers had this rule and enforced it.
Officially appointed moderators only go by the server's written rules, and they only enforce them against local users.
The HOA, on the other hand, have some rules in their heads. Everyone has different rules. And they enforce them against everyone, even regardless of where everyone actually is. Like, they attack Friendica users for allegedly misusing the CW field because they neither know that these users are not on Mastodon, much less where they actually are, nor that Mastodon's CW field has been an abstract field on Friendica for seven years longer than it has been a CW field on Mastodon.
This is part of what makes the Fediverse a minefield once your messages start reaching Mastodon.
I can't say that I'll stop being so overly careful with everything and putting such a big effort particulary into image descriptions, summaries/content warnings and hashtags for filter-triggering purposes if more or even most Mastodon servers adopt and enforce this rule. The irony is that this rule actually protects my long hashtag lines.
In fact, rules like these also ought to include that nobody must be policed for writing "too long" posts because there are places in the Fediverse that neither have character limits to worry about nor a character-limiting culture.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Hashtag #Hashtags #HashtagMeta #CWHashtagMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta -
@Cassian [main] This matches my observation here in the Fediverse.
Blind or visually-impaired users, those who actually need image descriptions, are happy to have alt-texts or image descriptions at all. Their requirements don't go much beyond that. And they don't personally attack or sanction anyone.
And then there's the alt-text police of Mastodon's HOA. They're sighted, all of them. It's them who attack, ostracise, sanction, block and sometimes even report other users. For missing alt-text, for completely useless alt-text, for inaccurate alt-text, even for alt-text that isn't detailed enough. For whichever definition of "detailed enough" because the alt-text police don't coordinate their standards. They literally don't talk to each other, so they all assume they all think alike.
In addition, the alt-text police know nothing about the actual rules and guidelines for good alt-texts and image descriptions. Everything they know, they know from Mastodon's culture and from what's going on on Mastodon. And thanks to Mastodon's culture, the Fediverse is a place where you can post an image with a detailed 1,000+-character alt-text and not only get away with it, but be cheered for it.
Never mind that users on Misskey and the Forkeys won't see alt-texts with over 512 characters due to a nasty bug. But tell that to users who don't even know that Misskey exists.
In order to save yourself and your reach in the Fediverse from the wrath of the alt-text police, you basically have to be constantly ahead of their minimum requirements which at least some of them appear to raise every now and then. This means you have to exceed their current minimum requirements to keep yourself from being sanctioned in four years for image descriptions that you've written today. You have to play by the book, and with that, I mean every book, because you never know who in the alt-text police goes by which alt-text guides.
That is, my current impression is that if an image shows something that's obscure enough, Fediverse users are obliged to deliver explanations as well. I understand that as enough explanations so that nobody will ever have to look anything up to understand the image or its description or any of the explanations.
I myself only rarely post images anymore, especially no original images. All my original images are renderings from very obscure 3-D virtual worlds. Images like these require a humongous amount of work to describe them in a way that keeps you safe from even the most zealous of the alt-text police.
I've once taken two full days, morning to evening, to describe one image. The outcome was an alt-text of exactly 1,500 characters plus an additional long description of over 60,000 characters in the post text that also contained all necessary explanations as well as transcripts of every last bit of text within the border of the image, readable or not.
Blind users with screen readers might proverbially be at my throat for their screen reader spending three hours rambling down the description of one measly image. But they probably won't attack or insult or block me for that. They may actually be thankful to have some description.
It's the sighted members of the alt-text police who attack or insult or block other users for less than optimal image descriptions. At the same time, I've yet to see one of them attack or insult or block someone for taking image descriptions to extremes. I guess they'd rather attack or insult or block me for exceeding Mastodon's holy 500-character limit because that long description with over 20 text transcripts and with the various explanations had to go somewhere.
Sad but true: If you want to survive in the Fediverse, you have to pander those who can be dangerous to you and your reach. And not so much to those who really need it.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #AltTextPolice #MastodonHOA -
@Brett Coulstock You should care if you think that Gargron has invented the Fediverse as a pure Mastodon network. If you think that e.g. Friendica and Hubzilla came into the Mastodon Fediverse after the fact. If you use this thinking as a justification to force Mastodon's rules and Mastodon's culture upon Friendica and Hubzilla users because you take them for intruders in a place where they don't rightfully belong.
Because Friendica and Hubzilla did not intrude into Mastodon's Fediverse. They were in the Fediverse before Mastodon.
You should care if you think that posting more than 500 characters is bad behaviour as it goes against "the Fediverse culture".
Because that "Fediverse culture" is only Mastodon's culture. And the culture on Friendica and Hubzilla, which pre-dates Mastodon itself by years, knows no character limits.
You should care if you think that Gargron is evil for introducing quote-posts to the Fediverse.
Because it was actually Mike Macgirvin, creator of Friendica and Hubzilla, who did that. In 2010. 16 years before now. Almost 6 years before Mastodon was even made.
And because just about everything that isn't Mastodon could quote-post Mastodon toots before Mastodon users even considered quote-posts evil.
You should care if you wish for "the Fediverse" to introduce certain new features. Like reply control. Or better list handlings. Or groups. Or even only more characters.
Because "the Fediverse" does have all these features. Just Mastodon doesn't have them. But Mastodon is not the Fediverse.
You should care if you don't want "the Fediverse" to ever introduce certain features. Like a higher default character limit. Or text formatting.
Because the Fediverse already has such features. As in, it can use these features in posts which it then sends to Mastodon. And there's nothing, absolutely nothing that Mastodon and its users can do against it. Except for muting and blocking.
You should care if you find it easier to use "Mastodon" and "Fediverse" synonymously, and all this "nitpicking" about when it's "Mastodon" and when it's "Fediverse" enrages you.
Because it enrages users in the non-Mastodon Fediverse when people say right into their faces that they toot. And/or that they're on Mastodon and therefore bound to the exact same rules and the exact same culture as everyone else on Mastodon. And they will so very much not let you have your way.
All these are things which, unfortunately, those who have never experienced anything else in the Fediverse than Mastodon will hardly ever understand.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse -
@Brett Coulstock You should care if you think that Gargron has invented the Fediverse as a pure Mastodon network. If you think that e.g. Friendica and Hubzilla came into the Mastodon Fediverse after the fact. If you use this thinking as a justification to force Mastodon's rules and Mastodon's culture upon Friendica and Hubzilla users because you take them for intruders in a place where they don't rightfully belong.
Because Friendica and Hubzilla did not intrude into Mastodon's Fediverse. They were in the Fediverse before Mastodon.
You should care if you think that posting more than 500 characters is bad behaviour as it goes against "the Fediverse culture".
Because that "Fediverse culture" is only Mastodon's culture. And the culture on Friendica and Hubzilla, which pre-dates Mastodon itself by years, knows no character limits.
You should care if you think that Gargron is evil for introducing quote-posts to the Fediverse.
Because it was actually Mike Macgirvin, creator of Friendica and Hubzilla, who did that. In 2010. 16 years before now. Almost 6 years before Mastodon was even made.
And because just about everything that isn't Mastodon could quote-post Mastodon toots before Mastodon users even considered quote-posts evil.
You should care if you wish for "the Fediverse" to introduce certain new features. Like reply control. Or better list handlings. Or groups. Or even only more characters.
Because "the Fediverse" does have all these features. Just Mastodon doesn't have them. But Mastodon is not the Fediverse.
You should care if you don't want "the Fediverse" to ever introduce certain features. Like a higher default character limit. Or text formatting.
Because the Fediverse already has such features. As in, it can use these features in posts which it then sends to Mastodon. And there's nothing, absolutely nothing that Mastodon and its users can do against it. Except for muting and blocking.
You should care if you find it easier to use "Mastodon" and "Fediverse" synonymously, and all this "nitpicking" about when it's "Mastodon" and when it's "Fediverse" enrages you.
Because it enrages users in the non-Mastodon Fediverse when people say right into their faces that they toot. And/or that they're on Mastodon and therefore bound to the exact same rules and the exact same culture as everyone else on Mastodon. And they will so very much not let you have your way.
All these are things which, unfortunately, those who have never experienced anything else in the Fediverse than Mastodon will hardly ever understand.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse -
@Brett Coulstock You should care if you think that Gargron has invented the Fediverse as a pure Mastodon network. If you think that e.g. Friendica and Hubzilla came into the Mastodon Fediverse after the fact. If you use this thinking as a justification to force Mastodon's rules and Mastodon's culture upon Friendica and Hubzilla users because you take them for intruders in a place where they don't rightfully belong.
Because Friendica and Hubzilla did not intrude into Mastodon's Fediverse. They were in the Fediverse before Mastodon.
You should care if you think that posting more than 500 characters is bad behaviour as it goes against "the Fediverse culture".
Because that "Fediverse culture" is only Mastodon's culture. And the culture on Friendica and Hubzilla, which pre-dates Mastodon itself by years, knows no character limits.
You should care if you think that Gargron is evil for introducing quote-posts to the Fediverse.
Because it was actually Mike Macgirvin, creator of Friendica and Hubzilla, who did that. In 2010. 16 years before now. Almost 6 years before Mastodon was even made.
And because just about everything that isn't Mastodon could quote-post Mastodon toots before Mastodon users even considered quote-posts evil.
You should care if you wish for "the Fediverse" to introduce certain new features. Like reply control. Or better list handlings. Or groups. Or even only more characters.
Because "the Fediverse" does have all these features. Just Mastodon doesn't have them. But Mastodon is not the Fediverse.
You should care if you don't want "the Fediverse" to ever introduce certain features. Like a higher default character limit. Or text formatting.
Because the Fediverse already has such features. As in, it can use these features in posts which it then sends to Mastodon. And there's nothing, absolutely nothing that Mastodon and its users can do against it. Except for muting and blocking.
You should care if you find it easier to use "Mastodon" and "Fediverse" synonymously, and all this "nitpicking" about when it's "Mastodon" and when it's "Fediverse" enrages you.
Because it enrages users in the non-Mastodon Fediverse when people say right into their faces that they toot. And/or that they're on Mastodon and therefore bound to the exact same rules and the exact same culture as everyone else on Mastodon. And they will so very much not let you have your way.
All these are things which, unfortunately, those who have never experienced anything else in the Fediverse than Mastodon will hardly ever understand.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse -
@Brett Coulstock You should care if you think that Gargron has invented the Fediverse as a pure Mastodon network. If you think that e.g. Friendica and Hubzilla came into the Mastodon Fediverse after the fact. If you use this thinking as a justification to force Mastodon's rules and Mastodon's culture upon Friendica and Hubzilla users because you take them for intruders in a place where they don't rightfully belong.
Because Friendica and Hubzilla did not intrude into Mastodon's Fediverse. They were in the Fediverse before Mastodon.
You should care if you think that posting more than 500 characters is bad behaviour as it goes against "the Fediverse culture".
Because that "Fediverse culture" is only Mastodon's culture. And the culture on Friendica and Hubzilla, which pre-dates Mastodon itself by years, knows no character limits.
You should care if you think that Gargron is evil for introducing quote-posts to the Fediverse.
Because it was actually Mike Macgirvin, creator of Friendica and Hubzilla, who did that. In 2010. 16 years before now. Almost 6 years before Mastodon was even made.
And because just about everything that isn't Mastodon could quote-post Mastodon toots before Mastodon users even considered quote-posts evil.
You should care if you wish for "the Fediverse" to introduce certain new features. Like reply control. Or better list handlings. Or groups. Or even only more characters.
Because "the Fediverse" does have all these features. Just Mastodon doesn't have them. But Mastodon is not the Fediverse.
You should care if you don't want "the Fediverse" to ever introduce certain features. Like a higher default character limit. Or text formatting.
Because the Fediverse already has such features. As in, it can use these features in posts which it then sends to Mastodon. And there's nothing, absolutely nothing that Mastodon and its users can do against it. Except for muting and blocking.
You should care if you find it easier to use "Mastodon" and "Fediverse" synonymously, and all this "nitpicking" about when it's "Mastodon" and when it's "Fediverse" enrages you.
Because it enrages users in the non-Mastodon Fediverse when people say right into their faces that they toot. And/or that they're on Mastodon and therefore bound to the exact same rules and the exact same culture as everyone else on Mastodon. And they will so very much not let you have your way.
All these are things which, unfortunately, those who have never experienced anything else in the Fediverse than Mastodon will hardly ever understand.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse -
@Brett Coulstock You should care if you think that Gargron has invented the Fediverse as a pure Mastodon network. If you think that e.g. Friendica and Hubzilla came into the Mastodon Fediverse after the fact. If you use this thinking as a justification to force Mastodon's rules and Mastodon's culture upon Friendica and Hubzilla users because you take them for intruders in a place where they don't rightfully belong.
Because Friendica and Hubzilla did not intrude into Mastodon's Fediverse. They were in the Fediverse before Mastodon.
You should care if you think that posting more than 500 characters is bad behaviour as it goes against "the Fediverse culture".
Because that "Fediverse culture" is only Mastodon's culture. And the culture on Friendica and Hubzilla, which pre-dates Mastodon itself by years, knows no character limits.
You should care if you think that Gargron is evil for introducing quote-posts to the Fediverse.
Because it was actually Mike Macgirvin, creator of Friendica and Hubzilla, who did that. In 2010. 16 years before now. Almost 6 years before Mastodon was even made.
And because just about everything that isn't Mastodon could quote-post Mastodon toots before Mastodon users even considered quote-posts evil.
You should care if you wish for "the Fediverse" to introduce certain new features. Like reply control. Or better list handlings. Or groups. Or even only more characters.
Because "the Fediverse" does have all these features. Just Mastodon doesn't have them. But Mastodon is not the Fediverse.
You should care if you don't want "the Fediverse" to ever introduce certain features. Like a higher default character limit. Or text formatting.
Because the Fediverse already has such features. As in, it can use these features in posts which it then sends to Mastodon. And there's nothing, absolutely nothing that Mastodon and its users can do against it. Except for muting and blocking.
You should care if you find it easier to use "Mastodon" and "Fediverse" synonymously, and all this "nitpicking" about when it's "Mastodon" and when it's "Fediverse" enrages you.
Because it enrages users in the non-Mastodon Fediverse when people say right into their faces that they toot. And/or that they're on Mastodon and therefore bound to the exact same rules and the exact same culture as everyone else on Mastodon. And they will so very much not let you have your way.
All these are things which, unfortunately, those who have never experienced anything else in the Fediverse than Mastodon will hardly ever understand.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse -
@Brett Coulstock You should care if you think that Gargron has invented the Fediverse as a pure Mastodon network. If you think that e.g. Friendica and Hubzilla came into the Mastodon Fediverse after the fact. If you use this thinking as a justification to force Mastodon's rules and Mastodon's culture upon Friendica and Hubzilla users because you take them for intruders in a place where they don't rightfully belong.
Because Friendica and Hubzilla did not intrude into Mastodon's Fediverse. They were in the Fediverse before Mastodon.
You should care if you think that posting more than 500 characters is bad behaviour as it goes against "the Fediverse culture".
Because that "Fediverse culture" is only Mastodon's culture. And the culture on Friendica and Hubzilla, which pre-dates Mastodon itself by years, knows no character limits.
You should care if you think that Gargron is evil for introducing quote-posts to the Fediverse.
Because it was actually Mike Macgirvin, creator of Friendica and Hubzilla, who did that. In 2010. 16 years before now. Almost 6 years before Mastodon was even made.
And because just about everything that isn't Mastodon could quote-post Mastodon toots before Mastodon users even considered quote-posts evil.
You should care if you wish for "the Fediverse" to introduce certain new features. Like reply control. Or better list handlings. Or groups. Or even only more characters.
Because "the Fediverse" does have all these features. Just Mastodon doesn't have them. But Mastodon is not the Fediverse.
You should care if you don't want "the Fediverse" to ever introduce certain features. Like a higher default character limit. Or text formatting.
Because the Fediverse already has such features. As in, it can use these features in posts which it then sends to Mastodon. And there's nothing, absolutely nothing that Mastodon and its users can do against it. Except for muting and blocking.
You should care if you find it easier to use "Mastodon" and "Fediverse" synonymously, and all this "nitpicking" about when it's "Mastodon" and when it's "Fediverse" enrages you.
Because it enrages users in the non-Mastodon Fediverse when people say right into their faces that they toot. And/or that they're on Mastodon and therefore bound to the exact same rules and the exact same culture as everyone else on Mastodon. And they will so very much not let you have your way.
All these are things which, unfortunately, those who have never experienced anything else in the Fediverse than Mastodon will hardly ever understand.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse -
@craftxbox No, it's about more than every other Mastodon user thinking that the Fediverse equals Mastodon.
Most of the rest still think (or they think they know):- The Fediverse started with Mastodon. Gargron has invented the Fediverse.
- Everything that isn't Mastodon is either designed as a Mastodon add-on (Pixelfed, PeerTube etc.), or if it clearly isn't that, it's an intruder into the Mastodon Fediverse.
- If Mastodon doesn't have a feature, the Fediverse doesn't have that feature. This also means that if they succeed at keeping Mastodon from introducing a feature that they don't want, the whole Fediverse will never have it.
There are Mastodon users who wish for "the Fediverse" (they mean Mastodon because that's all they know) to introduce some feature, blissfully unaware that this feature is all over the Fediverse outside of Mastodon.
There are Mastodon users who "know for a fact" that Mastodon has just introduced quote-posts to the Fediverse, including an opt-out that works Fediverse-wide. They're blissfully unaware that a) Friendica and Hubzilla have been able to quote-post literally every single last public Mastodon toot since Mastodon's launch in 2016, and b) they both still are, opt-out or not.
And then there are those who spend two years or more thinking the entire Fediverse is a 500-character microblogging service, and who shit brix in sheer terror and hammer on the block button in sheer panic whenever a "toot" with more than 500 characters shows up in their timeline.
And, of course, those who try hard to force Mastodon's culture and Mastodon's rules, both of which are geared towards Mastodon and Mastodon only, upon users of server applications that are very very much not Mastodon. Because they think that Mastodon culture = Fediverse culture. And who, at the same time, fight everyone who suggests they do something that isn't inline with their perception of Mastodon's culture and rules.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse -
@craftxbox No, it's about more than every other Mastodon user thinking that the Fediverse equals Mastodon.
Most of the rest still think (or they think they know):- The Fediverse started with Mastodon. Gargron has invented the Fediverse.
- Everything that isn't Mastodon is either designed as a Mastodon add-on (Pixelfed, PeerTube etc.), or if it clearly isn't that, it's an intruder into the Mastodon Fediverse.
- If Mastodon doesn't have a feature, the Fediverse doesn't have that feature. This also means that if they succeed at keeping Mastodon from introducing a feature that they don't want, the whole Fediverse will never have it.
There are Mastodon users who wish for "the Fediverse" (they mean Mastodon because that's all they know) to introduce some feature, blissfully unaware that this feature is all over the Fediverse outside of Mastodon.
There are Mastodon users who "know for a fact" that Mastodon has just introduced quote-posts to the Fediverse, including an opt-out that works Fediverse-wide. They're blissfully unaware that a) Friendica and Hubzilla have been able to quote-post literally every single last public Mastodon toot since Mastodon's launch in 2016, and b) they both still are, opt-out or not.
And then there are those who spend two years or more thinking the entire Fediverse is a 500-character microblogging service, and who shit brix in sheer terror and hammer on the block button in sheer panic whenever a "toot" with more than 500 characters shows up in their timeline.
And, of course, those who try hard to force Mastodon's culture and Mastodon's rules, both of which are geared towards Mastodon and Mastodon only, upon users of server applications that are very very much not Mastodon. Because they think that Mastodon culture = Fediverse culture. And who, at the same time, fight everyone who suggests they do something that isn't inline with their perception of Mastodon's culture and rules.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse -
@craftxbox No, it's about more than every other Mastodon user thinking that the Fediverse equals Mastodon.
Most of the rest still think (or they think they know):- The Fediverse started with Mastodon. Gargron has invented the Fediverse.
- Everything that isn't Mastodon is either designed as a Mastodon add-on (Pixelfed, PeerTube etc.), or if it clearly isn't that, it's an intruder into the Mastodon Fediverse.
- If Mastodon doesn't have a feature, the Fediverse doesn't have that feature. This also means that if they succeed at keeping Mastodon from introducing a feature that they don't want, the whole Fediverse will never have it.
There are Mastodon users who wish for "the Fediverse" (they mean Mastodon because that's all they know) to introduce some feature, blissfully unaware that this feature is all over the Fediverse outside of Mastodon.
There are Mastodon users who "know for a fact" that Mastodon has just introduced quote-posts to the Fediverse, including an opt-out that works Fediverse-wide. They're blissfully unaware that a) Friendica and Hubzilla have been able to quote-post literally every single last public Mastodon toot since Mastodon's launch in 2016, and b) they both still are, opt-out or not.
And then there are those who spend two years or more thinking the entire Fediverse is a 500-character microblogging service, and who shit brix in sheer terror and hammer on the block button in sheer panic whenever a "toot" with more than 500 characters shows up in their timeline.
And, of course, those who try hard to force Mastodon's culture and Mastodon's rules, both of which are geared towards Mastodon and Mastodon only, upon users of server applications that are very very much not Mastodon. Because they think that Mastodon culture = Fediverse culture. And who, at the same time, fight everyone who suggests they do something that isn't inline with their perception of Mastodon's culture and rules.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse -
@craftxbox No, it's about more than every other Mastodon user thinking that the Fediverse equals Mastodon.
Most of the rest still think (or they think they know):- The Fediverse started with Mastodon. Gargron has invented the Fediverse.
- Everything that isn't Mastodon is either designed as a Mastodon add-on (Pixelfed, PeerTube etc.), or if it clearly isn't that, it's an intruder into the Mastodon Fediverse.
- If Mastodon doesn't have a feature, the Fediverse doesn't have that feature. This also means that if they succeed at keeping Mastodon from introducing a feature that they don't want, the whole Fediverse will never have it.
There are Mastodon users who wish for "the Fediverse" (they mean Mastodon because that's all they know) to introduce some feature, blissfully unaware that this feature is all over the Fediverse outside of Mastodon.
There are Mastodon users who "know for a fact" that Mastodon has just introduced quote-posts to the Fediverse, including an opt-out that works Fediverse-wide. They're blissfully unaware that a) Friendica and Hubzilla have been able to quote-post literally every single last public Mastodon toot since Mastodon's launch in 2016, and b) they both still are, opt-out or not.
And then there are those who spend two years or more thinking the entire Fediverse is a 500-character microblogging service, and who shit brix in sheer terror and hammer on the block button in sheer panic whenever a "toot" with more than 500 characters shows up in their timeline.
And, of course, those who try hard to force Mastodon's culture and Mastodon's rules, both of which are geared towards Mastodon and Mastodon only, upon users of server applications that are very very much not Mastodon. Because they think that Mastodon culture = Fediverse culture. And who, at the same time, fight everyone who suggests they do something that isn't inline with their perception of Mastodon's culture and rules.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse -
@craftxbox No, it's about more than every other Mastodon user thinking that the Fediverse equals Mastodon.
Most of the rest still think (or they think they know):- The Fediverse started with Mastodon. Gargron has invented the Fediverse.
- Everything that isn't Mastodon is either designed as a Mastodon add-on (Pixelfed, PeerTube etc.), or if it clearly isn't that, it's an intruder into the Mastodon Fediverse.
- If Mastodon doesn't have a feature, the Fediverse doesn't have that feature. This also means that if they succeed at keeping Mastodon from introducing a feature that they don't want, the whole Fediverse will never have it.
There are Mastodon users who wish for "the Fediverse" (they mean Mastodon because that's all they know) to introduce some feature, blissfully unaware that this feature is all over the Fediverse outside of Mastodon.
There are Mastodon users who "know for a fact" that Mastodon has just introduced quote-posts to the Fediverse, including an opt-out that works Fediverse-wide. They're blissfully unaware that a) Friendica and Hubzilla have been able to quote-post literally every single last public Mastodon toot since Mastodon's launch in 2016, and b) they both still are, opt-out or not.
And then there are those who spend two years or more thinking the entire Fediverse is a 500-character microblogging service, and who shit brix in sheer terror and hammer on the block button in sheer panic whenever a "toot" with more than 500 characters shows up in their timeline.
And, of course, those who try hard to force Mastodon's culture and Mastodon's rules, both of which are geared towards Mastodon and Mastodon only, upon users of server applications that are very very much not Mastodon. Because they think that Mastodon culture = Fediverse culture. And who, at the same time, fight everyone who suggests they do something that isn't inline with their perception of Mastodon's culture and rules.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse -
@craftxbox No, it's about more than every other Mastodon user thinking that the Fediverse equals Mastodon.
Most of the rest still think (or they think they know):- The Fediverse started with Mastodon. Gargron has invented the Fediverse.
- Everything that isn't Mastodon is either designed as a Mastodon add-on (Pixelfed, PeerTube etc.), or if it clearly isn't that, it's an intruder into the Mastodon Fediverse.
- If Mastodon doesn't have a feature, the Fediverse doesn't have that feature. This also means that if they succeed at keeping Mastodon from introducing a feature that they don't want, the whole Fediverse will never have it.
There are Mastodon users who wish for "the Fediverse" (they mean Mastodon because that's all they know) to introduce some feature, blissfully unaware that this feature is all over the Fediverse outside of Mastodon.
There are Mastodon users who "know for a fact" that Mastodon has just introduced quote-posts to the Fediverse, including an opt-out that works Fediverse-wide. They're blissfully unaware that a) Friendica and Hubzilla have been able to quote-post literally every single last public Mastodon toot since Mastodon's launch in 2016, and b) they both still are, opt-out or not.
And then there are those who spend two years or more thinking the entire Fediverse is a 500-character microblogging service, and who shit brix in sheer terror and hammer on the block button in sheer panic whenever a "toot" with more than 500 characters shows up in their timeline.
And, of course, those who try hard to force Mastodon's culture and Mastodon's rules, both of which are geared towards Mastodon and Mastodon only, upon users of server applications that are very very much not Mastodon. Because they think that Mastodon culture = Fediverse culture. And who, at the same time, fight everyone who suggests they do something that isn't inline with their perception of Mastodon's culture and rules.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse -
CW: Uncomfortable truth about the Fediverse that'll totally scare Mastodon users; CW: long (over 2,400 characters), Fediverse meta, Fediverse-beyond-Mastodon meta, quote-post meta, character limit meta
When you see it, you'll shit brix: The Hubzilla timeline.
The "it" that you're supposed to see is:- The Fediverse did, in fact, not start with Mastodon.
There was something in the Fediverse before Mastodon: Mistpark was there almost 6 years before Mastodon, Hubzilla was there 10 months before Mastodon.
Mastodon came into an already existing Fediverse with servers and users and content and a culture.
The Fediverse has never been only Mastodon. And it will never be. - The Fediverse had quote-posts almost 6 years before Mastodon.
(Accurate implication: The non-Mastodon Fediverse can quote-post any public Mastodon toot with no problems, and it has always been able to do so, for as long as Mastodon has been around.) - The Fediverse had groups almost 6 years before Mastodon which still doesn't even support groups.
- The Fediverse had better lists than Mastodon lists almost 6 years before Mastodon.
- The Fediverse had reply control almost 6 years before Mastodon where people are still waiting for some kind of reply control.
- The Fediverse had permissions almost 6 years before Mastodon where the concept of permissions is completely unknown.
- The Fediverse had no character limit to worry about almost 6 years before Mastodon came along with only 500 characters.
The Fediverse had 16,777,215 characters almost 6 years before Mastodon had 500 characters. - The Fediverse had full rich-text formatting almost 6 years before Mastodon.
The Fediverse could generate bold type, italics, underline,code blocks, bullet-point lists etc. without any Unicode trickery. Almost 6 years before Mastodon was there. And more than 12 years before Mastodon could even only display that stuff.
Although it should be blatantly obvious: This here is not a Mastodon toot. This post comes from Hubzilla directly to your Mastodon apps.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Mistpark #Friendica #Hubzilla #FediverseCulture #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #Groups #FediGroups #FediverseGroups #Lists #ReplyControl #Permissions #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #TextFormatting #RichText #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse - The Fediverse did, in fact, not start with Mastodon.
-
CW: Uncomfortable truth about the Fediverse that'll totally scare Mastodon users; CW: long (over 2,400 characters), Fediverse meta, Fediverse-beyond-Mastodon meta, quote-post meta, character limit meta
When you see it, you'll shit brix: The Hubzilla timeline.
The "it" that you're supposed to see is:- The Fediverse did, in fact, not start with Mastodon.
There was something in the Fediverse before Mastodon: Mistpark was there almost 6 years before Mastodon, Hubzilla was there 10 months before Mastodon.
Mastodon came into an already existing Fediverse with servers and users and content and a culture.
The Fediverse has never been only Mastodon. And it will never be. - The Fediverse had quote-posts almost 6 years before Mastodon.
(Accurate implication: The non-Mastodon Fediverse can quote-post any public Mastodon toot with no problems, and it has always been able to do so, for as long as Mastodon has been around.) - The Fediverse had groups almost 6 years before Mastodon which still doesn't even support groups.
- The Fediverse had better lists than Mastodon lists almost 6 years before Mastodon.
- The Fediverse had reply control almost 6 years before Mastodon where people are still waiting for some kind of reply control.
- The Fediverse had permissions almost 6 years before Mastodon where the concept of permissions is completely unknown.
- The Fediverse had no character limit to worry about almost 6 years before Mastodon came along with only 500 characters.
The Fediverse had 16,777,215 characters almost 6 years before Mastodon had 500 characters. - The Fediverse had full rich-text formatting almost 6 years before Mastodon.
The Fediverse could generate bold type, italics, underline,code blocks, bullet-point lists etc. without any Unicode trickery. Almost 6 years before Mastodon was there. And more than 12 years before Mastodon could even only display that stuff.
Although it should be blatantly obvious: This here is not a Mastodon toot. This post comes from Hubzilla directly to your Mastodon apps.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Mistpark #Friendica #Hubzilla #FediverseCulture #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #Groups #FediGroups #FediverseGroups #Lists #ReplyControl #Permissions #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #TextFormatting #RichText #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse - The Fediverse did, in fact, not start with Mastodon.
-
CW: Uncomfortable truth about the Fediverse that'll totally scare Mastodon users; CW: long (over 2,400 characters), Fediverse meta, Fediverse-beyond-Mastodon meta, quote-post meta, character limit meta
When you see it, you'll shit brix: The Hubzilla timeline.
The "it" that you're supposed to see is:- The Fediverse did, in fact, not start with Mastodon.
There was something in the Fediverse before Mastodon: Mistpark was there almost 6 years before Mastodon, Hubzilla was there 10 months before Mastodon.
Mastodon came into an already existing Fediverse with servers and users and content and a culture.
The Fediverse has never been only Mastodon. And it will never be. - The Fediverse had quote-posts almost 6 years before Mastodon.
(Accurate implication: The non-Mastodon Fediverse can quote-post any public Mastodon toot with no problems, and it has always been able to do so, for as long as Mastodon has been around.) - The Fediverse had groups almost 6 years before Mastodon which still doesn't even support groups.
- The Fediverse had better lists than Mastodon lists almost 6 years before Mastodon.
- The Fediverse had reply control almost 6 years before Mastodon where people are still waiting for some kind of reply control.
- The Fediverse had permissions almost 6 years before Mastodon where the concept of permissions is completely unknown.
- The Fediverse had no character limit to worry about almost 6 years before Mastodon came along with only 500 characters.
The Fediverse had 16,777,215 characters almost 6 years before Mastodon had 500 characters. - The Fediverse had full rich-text formatting almost 6 years before Mastodon.
The Fediverse could generate bold type, italics, underline,code blocks, bullet-point lists etc. without any Unicode trickery. Almost 6 years before Mastodon was there. And more than 12 years before Mastodon could even only display that stuff.
Although it should be blatantly obvious: This here is not a Mastodon toot. This post comes from Hubzilla directly to your Mastodon apps.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Mistpark #Friendica #Hubzilla #FediverseCulture #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #Groups #FediGroups #FediverseGroups #Lists #ReplyControl #Permissions #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #TextFormatting #RichText #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse - The Fediverse did, in fact, not start with Mastodon.
-
CW: Uncomfortable truth about the Fediverse that'll totally scare Mastodon users; CW: long (over 2,400 characters), Fediverse meta, Fediverse-beyond-Mastodon meta, quote-post meta, character limit meta
When you see it, you'll shit brix: The Hubzilla timeline.
The "it" that you're supposed to see is:- The Fediverse did, in fact, not start with Mastodon.
There was something in the Fediverse before Mastodon: Mistpark was there almost 6 years before Mastodon, Hubzilla was there 10 months before Mastodon.
Mastodon came into an already existing Fediverse with servers and users and content and a culture.
The Fediverse has never been only Mastodon. And it will never be. - The Fediverse had quote-posts almost 6 years before Mastodon.
(Accurate implication: The non-Mastodon Fediverse can quote-post any public Mastodon toot with no problems, and it has always been able to do so, for as long as Mastodon has been around.) - The Fediverse had groups almost 6 years before Mastodon which still doesn't even support groups.
- The Fediverse had better lists than Mastodon lists almost 6 years before Mastodon.
- The Fediverse had reply control almost 6 years before Mastodon where people are still waiting for some kind of reply control.
- The Fediverse had permissions almost 6 years before Mastodon where the concept of permissions is completely unknown.
- The Fediverse had no character limit to worry about almost 6 years before Mastodon came along with only 500 characters.
The Fediverse had 16,777,215 characters almost 6 years before Mastodon had 500 characters. - The Fediverse had full rich-text formatting almost 6 years before Mastodon.
The Fediverse could generate bold type, italics, underline,code blocks, bullet-point lists etc. without any Unicode trickery. Almost 6 years before Mastodon was there. And more than 12 years before Mastodon could even only display that stuff.
Although it should be blatantly obvious: This here is not a Mastodon toot. This post comes from Hubzilla directly to your Mastodon apps.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Mistpark #Friendica #Hubzilla #FediverseCulture #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #Groups #FediGroups #FediverseGroups #Lists #ReplyControl #Permissions #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #TextFormatting #RichText #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse - The Fediverse did, in fact, not start with Mastodon.
-
CW: Uncomfortable truth about the Fediverse that'll totally scare Mastodon users; CW: long (over 2,400 characters), Fediverse meta, Fediverse-beyond-Mastodon meta, quote-post meta, character limit meta
When you see it, you'll shit brix: The Hubzilla timeline.
The "it" that you're supposed to see is:- The Fediverse did, in fact, not start with Mastodon.
There was something in the Fediverse before Mastodon: Mistpark was there almost 6 years before Mastodon, Hubzilla was there 10 months before Mastodon.
Mastodon came into an already existing Fediverse with servers and users and content and a culture.
The Fediverse has never been only Mastodon. And it will never be. - The Fediverse had quote-posts almost 6 years before Mastodon.
(Accurate implication: The non-Mastodon Fediverse can quote-post any public Mastodon toot with no problems, and it has always been able to do so, for as long as Mastodon has been around.) - The Fediverse had groups almost 6 years before Mastodon which still doesn't even support groups.
- The Fediverse had better lists than Mastodon lists almost 6 years before Mastodon.
- The Fediverse had reply control almost 6 years before Mastodon where people are still waiting for some kind of reply control.
- The Fediverse had permissions almost 6 years before Mastodon where the concept of permissions is completely unknown.
- The Fediverse had no character limit to worry about almost 6 years before Mastodon came along with only 500 characters.
The Fediverse had 16,777,215 characters almost 6 years before Mastodon had 500 characters. - The Fediverse had full rich-text formatting almost 6 years before Mastodon.
The Fediverse could generate bold type, italics, underline,code blocks, bullet-point lists etc. without any Unicode trickery. Almost 6 years before Mastodon was there. And more than 12 years before Mastodon could even only display that stuff.
Although it should be blatantly obvious: This here is not a Mastodon toot. This post comes from Hubzilla directly to your Mastodon apps.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Mistpark #Friendica #Hubzilla #FediverseCulture #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #Groups #FediGroups #FediverseGroups #Lists #ReplyControl #Permissions #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #TextFormatting #RichText #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse - The Fediverse did, in fact, not start with Mastodon.
-
CW: Uncomfortable truth about the Fediverse that'll totally scare Mastodon users; CW: long (over 2,400 characters), Fediverse meta, Fediverse-beyond-Mastodon meta, quote-post meta, character limit meta
When you see it, you'll shit brix: The Hubzilla timeline.
The "it" that you're supposed to see is:- The Fediverse did, in fact, not start with Mastodon.
There was something in the Fediverse before Mastodon: Mistpark was there almost 6 years before Mastodon, Hubzilla was there 10 months before Mastodon.
Mastodon came into an already existing Fediverse with servers and users and content and a culture.
The Fediverse has never been only Mastodon. And it will never be. - The Fediverse had quote-posts almost 6 years before Mastodon.
(Accurate implication: The non-Mastodon Fediverse can quote-post any public Mastodon toot with no problems, and it has always been able to do so, for as long as Mastodon has been around.) - The Fediverse had groups almost 6 years before Mastodon which still doesn't even support groups.
- The Fediverse had better lists than Mastodon lists almost 6 years before Mastodon.
- The Fediverse had reply control almost 6 years before Mastodon where people are still waiting for some kind of reply control.
- The Fediverse had permissions almost 6 years before Mastodon where the concept of permissions is completely unknown.
- The Fediverse had no character limit to worry about almost 6 years before Mastodon came along with only 500 characters.
The Fediverse had 16,777,215 characters almost 6 years before Mastodon had 500 characters. - The Fediverse had full rich-text formatting almost 6 years before Mastodon.
The Fediverse could generate bold type, italics, underline,code blocks, bullet-point lists etc. without any Unicode trickery. Almost 6 years before Mastodon was there. And more than 12 years before Mastodon could even only display that stuff.
Although it should be blatantly obvious: This here is not a Mastodon toot. This post comes from Hubzilla directly to your Mastodon apps.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Mistpark #Friendica #Hubzilla #FediverseCulture #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #Groups #FediGroups #FediverseGroups #Lists #ReplyControl #Permissions #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #TextFormatting #RichText #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse - The Fediverse did, in fact, not start with Mastodon.
-
Udělal jsem Bash skript na kompresi Mastodonových příspěvků, aby měly větší šanci, že se vejdou do cenzurního limitu 2000 znaků, a snížila se tak diskriminace lidí, jejichž osobnost má vyšší hodnotu expresivity:
#!/bin/bash
LC_ALL=C sed -E '
s/([],!?:.)}]) /\1/g
s/ \(/(/g
s/\.\.\./…/g
s/ \[/[/g
s/ / <200b> <200b> /g
s/ / <200b> /g
s/ ?-- ?/—/g
s/ ?("|„|“) ?/\1/g
'#mastodon #limit #characterlimit #compression #censorship #discrimination
-
@Leonardo Giovanni Scur First of all, it isn't about my requirements. Just like, surprise, surprise, Mastodon's alt-text police is not blind.
It's about general accessibility. And it's about Mastodon users acting inclusively towards blind or visually-impaired people and, at the same time, ableistically towards people with other physical disabilities. Just because they cling hard to the extra 1,500 characters that alt-text gives them per image to their meagre character count for posts.
Except for professional Web accessibility experts, literally nobody on Mastodon seems to know what alt-text really is for. Alt-text is meant to be a 1:1 stand-in for an image, in case the image can't be perceived for whichever reason.
Alt-text is not meant to be an additional source of information beyond what information the image conveys.
Mastodon's use of alt-text for extra information beyond the post character limit is just as much alt-text misuse as cramming alt-text with keywords for SEO on websites. Unfortunately, it is so deeply engrained into Mastodon's culture that even the Mastodon devs have played along and added that "ALT" button which most Mastodon users think is the default and the standard Fediverse-wide now.
But let me tell you something:
Mastodon and its forks are most likely the only Fediverse server applications with an alt-text button. And they're far from making up the whole Fediverse.
Misskey and its various forks don't have an alt-text button.
AFAIK, Pleroma-FE and Akkoma-FE don't have an alt-text button, and neither has Mangane.
Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams), Forte, they all don't have an alt-text button.
Lemmy doesn't have an alt-text button. /kbin and Mbin don't have an alt-text button. PieFed doesn't have an alt-text button.
WriteFreely doesn't have an alt-text button. Plume doesn't have an alt-text button. WordPress doesn't have an alt-text button either.
Blogs in general don't have an alt-text button. Forums don't have an alt-text button. Static websites don't have an alt-text button.
Twitter/𝕏 doesn't have an alt-text button. Facebook doesn't have an alt-text button. Instagram doesn't have an alt-text button. Threads doesn't have an alt-text button. Tumblr doesn't have an alt-text button. Flickr doesn't have an alt-text button. Pinterest doesn't have an alt-text button. And so forth.
The W3C doesn't mention alt-text buttons. The WCAG don't mention alt-text buttons.
Why not? Because they're all way behind Mastodon in accessibility?
No, but because their developers know that alt-text is not an additional source of information for sighted people.
Literally the only place anywhere in the Web where alt-text both counts and is actively used as an additional source of information for sighted people is Mastodon. Plus its forks.
How I handle that? I put all needed extra information into the post text. But I'm not on Mastodon. I'm on Hubzilla. My character limit is over 30,000 times higher than on Mastodon.
Seriously, if missing alt-text is sanctioned as ableist, if useless alt-text is sanctioned as ableist, if inaccurate alt-text is sanctioned as ableist, if too lacking alt-text is sanctioned as ableist, then putting exclusive information into alt-text must be sanctioned as ableist just as well.
To those on Mastodon who oh so desperately need more than 500 characters: Move someplace in the Fediverse that has more than 500 characters. There's Fediverse server software from 3,000 characters to over 24,000,000 characters that, nonetheless, is federated with Mastodon.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #Ableism #AbleismMeta #CWAbleismMeta -
@Leonardo Giovanni Scur First of all, it isn't about my requirements. Just like, surprise, surprise, Mastodon's alt-text police is not blind.
It's about general accessibility. And it's about Mastodon users acting inclusively towards blind or visually-impaired people and, at the same time, ableistically towards people with other physical disabilities. Just because they cling hard to the extra 1,500 characters that alt-text gives them per image to their meagre character count for posts.
Except for professional Web accessibility experts, literally nobody on Mastodon seems to know what alt-text really is for. Alt-text is meant to be a 1:1 stand-in for an image, in case the image can't be perceived for whichever reason.
Alt-text is not meant to be an additional source of information beyond what information the image conveys.
Mastodon's use of alt-text for extra information beyond the post character limit is just as much alt-text misuse as cramming alt-text with keywords for SEO on websites. Unfortunately, it is so deeply engrained into Mastodon's culture that even the Mastodon devs have played along and added that "ALT" button which most Mastodon users think is the default and the standard Fediverse-wide now.
But let me tell you something:
Mastodon and its forks are most likely the only Fediverse server applications with an alt-text button. And they're far from making up the whole Fediverse.
Misskey and its various forks don't have an alt-text button.
AFAIK, Pleroma-FE and Akkoma-FE don't have an alt-text button, and neither has Mangane.
Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams), Forte, they all don't have an alt-text button.
Lemmy doesn't have an alt-text button. /kbin and Mbin don't have an alt-text button. PieFed doesn't have an alt-text button.
WriteFreely doesn't have an alt-text button. Plume doesn't have an alt-text button. WordPress doesn't have an alt-text button either.
Blogs in general don't have an alt-text button. Forums don't have an alt-text button. Static websites don't have an alt-text button.
Twitter/𝕏 doesn't have an alt-text button. Facebook doesn't have an alt-text button. Instagram doesn't have an alt-text button. Threads doesn't have an alt-text button. Tumblr doesn't have an alt-text button. Flickr doesn't have an alt-text button. Pinterest doesn't have an alt-text button. And so forth.
The W3C doesn't mention alt-text buttons. The WCAG don't mention alt-text buttons.
Why not? Because they're all way behind Mastodon in accessibility?
No, but because their developers know that alt-text is not an additional source of information for sighted people.
Literally the only place anywhere in the Web where alt-text both counts and is actively used as an additional source of information for sighted people is Mastodon. Plus its forks.
How I handle that? I put all needed extra information into the post text. But I'm not on Mastodon. I'm on Hubzilla. My character limit is over 30,000 times higher than on Mastodon.
Seriously, if missing alt-text is sanctioned as ableist, if useless alt-text is sanctioned as ableist, if inaccurate alt-text is sanctioned as ableist, if too lacking alt-text is sanctioned as ableist, then putting exclusive information into alt-text must be sanctioned as ableist just as well.
To those on Mastodon who oh so desperately need more than 500 characters: Move someplace in the Fediverse that has more than 500 characters. There's Fediverse server software from 3,000 characters to over 24,000,000 characters that, nonetheless, is federated with Mastodon.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #Ableism #AbleismMeta #CWAbleismMeta -
@Quasit I wouldn't build it on Mastodon. Nor would I build it from scratch and then against Mastodon, only Mastodon and nothing but Mastodon. The Fediverse is not only much more than Mastodon, but technologically much more diverse than just Mastodon.
The best way would be to build it as an add-on (a so-called "app") for (streams) or Forte. That way, you would neither have to deal with Mastodon's limitations (yes, Mastodon is very limited although this isn't apparent to those of its users who don't know anything else), nor would you have to develop Fediverse server software from scratch.
In case you don't know them:
(streams) is the unofficial community name of a very powerful but technically nameless Fediverse application whose code is in the streams repository (https://codeberg.org/streams/streams). It's essentially a Facebook-style social networking application with quite a number of extra features and the second-most recent member of a software family that dates all the way back to Friendica from 2010 (https://friendi.ca). It's a fork of a fork of three forks of a fork (of a fork?) of Hubzilla (https://hubzilla.org) which, in turn, was reworked from a fork of a fork of what's now Friendica.
And Forte (https://codeberg.org/fortified/forte) is a fork of the streams repository that's very similar to (streams) itself.
All this was originally done by one and the same developer, a professional in IT and software for close to half a century.
Here is an article I've put together with tables that compare Mastodon, Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte: https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/item/0a75de76-eb27-4149-b708-f20b2f79d392
Unlike Mastodon which has only got four general-purpose profile fields in addition to the profile text, both (streams) and Forte already come with the profile fields that a good dating app would need such as:- pronouns (pick one out of 3 or none at all)
- birthday (from which the age is calculated)
- six free-text location fields, even including Facebook-style "hometown" where you used to live; you can select for yourself how far you want to go into detail with revealing your location
- gender (pick one out of 14 or none at all)
- marital status (pick one out of 31 or none at all) plus who plus date since
- sexual preference (pick one out of 9 or none at all)
- a separate keyword field
- political views
- religious views
- hobbies/interests
- likes
- dislikes
- other channels/Fediverse identities
- musical interests
- books/literature
- television
- film/dance/culture/entertainment
- love/romance
- work/employment
- school/education
A dating app could easily tie into the directory and make use of these profile fields. It could use a tag of its own in the keyword field so that it only shows channels that use this app (I'm not sure if it's possible to detect which channel has which apps installed).
One big advantage for users is that they don't have to use their daily-driver channel for the dating app. On Mastodon and in most of the Fediverse, your account is both your login and your identity. On (streams) and Forte, you can have multiple fully independent identities, each with its own name, its own ID, its own profile, its own contacts, its own posts and conversations, its own settings etc. etc., all behind one and the same login. It's like having multiple Mastodon accounts behind one login. That way, users don't have to reveal to everyone who knows their official daily-driver channel that they're using this dating app.
Also, Mastodon is hard-coded to 500 characters. You literally have to soft-fork it and edit the source code to change the limit. Both (streams) and Forte are essentially unlimited in characters (their actual character limit is over 24 million).
Privacy and security are much higher on (streams) and Forte than on Mastodon, in fact, much higher than most Fediverse users can even imagine. Private messages are actually literally private. On Mastodon, a direct message only defines whom it's sent to. On (streams) and Forte, permissions come into play. The start post in a conversation defines who is allowed to see the conversation. Not only that post, but all comments as well. It's literally impossible to pull someone else into an existing private conversation by mentioning because that someone simply isn't allowed to see anything in the conversation.
So when you're chatting with a woman via PM, and she dislikes you, she can't shame or dogpile you by pulling her friends into the conversation.
On top of that, although even Friendica already had quote-posts since 2010, private messages cannot be quote-posted.
For a developer, all it takes to build this is PHP plus database know-how. Like the whole rest of the family, (streams) and Forte don't need anything more than a LAMP stack. No Ruby on Rails, no Elixir, no TypeScript or Vue.js or any other JavaScript, no .NET.
Deploying a (streams) or Forte app is easy, too: Create a public git repository for it, keep it there, and server admins can add your repository to their servers and activate your app server-side. Both (streams) and Forte are very modular and designed to be easy to expand.
Most of this would be possible with Hubzilla as well which is much bigger in terms of users and available servers. However, Hubzilla has got one disadvantage: Its directory only shows Hubzilla and (streams) channels, i.e. channels that use Hubzilla's native Zot protocol. That's because ActivityPub support on Hubzilla is provided by another app, it's optional, it's off by default, and the directory can't tie into it. On (streams), ActivityPub support is still optional, but more advanced than on Hubzilla, built into the core and on by default. And Forte doesn't support anything else than ActivityPub.
In theory, it should be possible to build such a dating app for all three.
Also, yes, in theory, channels that use such a dating app can connect to Mastodon. But Mastodon users couldn't use that dating app. Mastodon simply doesn't have any support for profile fields which it itself doesn't have. Also, Mastodon is too unsecure, and meaningful conversations are difficult if one side is limited to 500 characters. And I would hate to see this dating app bound hard to Mastodon's culture and Mastodon's unwritten rules, neither of which take the Fediverse outside of Mastodon into account.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #MastodonCulture #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #FediDate -
@Quasit I wouldn't build it on Mastodon. Nor would I build it from scratch and then against Mastodon, only Mastodon and nothing but Mastodon. The Fediverse is not only much more than Mastodon, but technologically much more diverse than just Mastodon.
The best way would be to build it as an add-on (a so-called "app") for (streams) or Forte. That way, you would neither have to deal with Mastodon's limitations (yes, Mastodon is very limited although this isn't apparent to those of its users who don't know anything else), nor would you have to develop Fediverse server software from scratch.
In case you don't know them:
(streams) is the unofficial community name of a very powerful but technically nameless Fediverse application whose code is in the streams repository (https://codeberg.org/streams/streams). It's essentially a Facebook-style social networking application with quite a number of extra features and the second-most recent member of a software family that dates all the way back to Friendica from 2010 (https://friendi.ca). It's a fork of a fork of three forks of a fork (of a fork?) of Hubzilla (https://hubzilla.org) which, in turn, was reworked from a fork of a fork of what's now Friendica.
And Forte (https://codeberg.org/fortified/forte) is a fork of the streams repository that's very similar to (streams) itself.
All this was originally done by one and the same developer, a professional in IT and software for close to half a century.
Here is an article I've put together with tables that compare Mastodon, Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte: https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/item/0a75de76-eb27-4149-b708-f20b2f79d392
Unlike Mastodon which has only got four general-purpose profile fields in addition to the profile text, both (streams) and Forte already come with the profile fields that a good dating app would need such as:- pronouns (pick one out of 3 or none at all)
- birthday (from which the age is calculated)
- six free-text location fields, even including Facebook-style "hometown" where you used to live; you can select for yourself how far you want to go into detail with revealing your location
- gender (pick one out of 14 or none at all)
- marital status (pick one out of 31 or none at all) plus who plus date since
- sexual preference (pick one out of 9 or none at all)
- a separate keyword field
- political views
- religious views
- hobbies/interests
- likes
- dislikes
- other channels/Fediverse identities
- musical interests
- books/literature
- television
- film/dance/culture/entertainment
- love/romance
- work/employment
- school/education
A dating app could easily tie into the directory and make use of these profile fields. It could use a tag of its own in the keyword field so that it only shows channels that use this app (I'm not sure if it's possible to detect which channel has which apps installed).
One big advantage for users is that they don't have to use their daily-driver channel for the dating app. On Mastodon and in most of the Fediverse, your account is both your login and your identity. On (streams) and Forte, you can have multiple fully independent identities, each with its own name, its own ID, its own profile, its own contacts, its own posts and conversations, its own settings etc. etc., all behind one and the same login. It's like having multiple Mastodon accounts behind one login. That way, users don't have to reveal to everyone who knows their official daily-driver channel that they're using this dating app.
Also, Mastodon is hard-coded to 500 characters. You literally have to soft-fork it and edit the source code to change the limit. Both (streams) and Forte are essentially unlimited in characters (their actual character limit is over 24 million).
Privacy and security are much higher on (streams) and Forte than on Mastodon, in fact, much higher than most Fediverse users can even imagine. Private messages are actually literally private. On Mastodon, a direct message only defines whom it's sent to. On (streams) and Forte, permissions come into play. The start post in a conversation defines who is allowed to see the conversation. Not only that post, but all comments as well. It's literally impossible to pull someone else into an existing private conversation by mentioning because that someone simply isn't allowed to see anything in the conversation.
So when you're chatting with a woman via PM, and she dislikes you, she can't shame or dogpile you by pulling her friends into the conversation.
On top of that, although even Friendica already had quote-posts since 2010, private messages cannot be quote-posted.
For a developer, all it takes to build this is PHP plus database know-how. Like the whole rest of the family, (streams) and Forte don't need anything more than a LAMP stack. No Ruby on Rails, no Elixir, no TypeScript or Vue.js or any other JavaScript, no .NET.
Deploying a (streams) or Forte app is easy, too: Create a public git repository for it, keep it there, and server admins can add your repository to their servers and activate your app server-side. Both (streams) and Forte are very modular and designed to be easy to expand.
Most of this would be possible with Hubzilla as well which is much bigger in terms of users and available servers. However, Hubzilla has got one disadvantage: Its directory only shows Hubzilla and (streams) channels, i.e. channels that use Hubzilla's native Zot protocol. That's because ActivityPub support on Hubzilla is provided by another app, it's optional, it's off by default, and the directory can't tie into it. On (streams), ActivityPub support is still optional, but more advanced than on Hubzilla, built into the core and on by default. And Forte doesn't support anything else than ActivityPub.
In theory, it should be possible to build such a dating app for all three.
Also, yes, in theory, channels that use such a dating app can connect to Mastodon. But Mastodon users couldn't use that dating app. Mastodon simply doesn't have any support for profile fields which it itself doesn't have. Also, Mastodon is too unsecure, and meaningful conversations are difficult if one side is limited to 500 characters. And I would hate to see this dating app bound hard to Mastodon's culture and Mastodon's unwritten rules, neither of which take the Fediverse outside of Mastodon into account.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #MastodonCulture #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #FediDate -
@Quasit I wouldn't build it on Mastodon. Nor would I build it from scratch and then against Mastodon, only Mastodon and nothing but Mastodon. The Fediverse is not only much more than Mastodon, but technologically much more diverse than just Mastodon.
The best way would be to build it as an add-on (a so-called "app") for (streams) or Forte. That way, you would neither have to deal with Mastodon's limitations (yes, Mastodon is very limited although this isn't apparent to those of its users who don't know anything else), nor would you have to develop Fediverse server software from scratch.
In case you don't know them:
(streams) is the unofficial community name of a very powerful but technically nameless Fediverse application whose code is in the streams repository (https://codeberg.org/streams/streams). It's essentially a Facebook-style social networking application with quite a number of extra features and the second-most recent member of a software family that dates all the way back to Friendica from 2010 (https://friendi.ca). It's a fork of a fork of three forks of a fork (of a fork?) of Hubzilla (https://hubzilla.org) which, in turn, was reworked from a fork of a fork of what's now Friendica.
And Forte (https://codeberg.org/fortified/forte) is a fork of the streams repository that's very similar to (streams) itself.
All this was originally done by one and the same developer, a professional in IT and software for close to half a century.
Here is an article I've put together with tables that compare Mastodon, Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte: https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/item/0a75de76-eb27-4149-b708-f20b2f79d392
Unlike Mastodon which has only got four general-purpose profile fields in addition to the profile text, both (streams) and Forte already come with the profile fields that a good dating app would need such as:- pronouns (pick one out of 3 or none at all)
- birthday (from which the age is calculated)
- six free-text location fields, even including Facebook-style "hometown" where you used to live; you can select for yourself how far you want to go into detail with revealing your location
- gender (pick one out of 14 or none at all)
- marital status (pick one out of 31 or none at all) plus who plus date since
- sexual preference (pick one out of 9 or none at all)
- a separate keyword field
- political views
- religious views
- hobbies/interests
- likes
- dislikes
- other channels/Fediverse identities
- musical interests
- books/literature
- television
- film/dance/culture/entertainment
- love/romance
- work/employment
- school/education
A dating app could easily tie into the directory and make use of these profile fields. It could use a tag of its own in the keyword field so that it only shows channels that use this app (I'm not sure if it's possible to detect which channel has which apps installed).
One big advantage for users is that they don't have to use their daily-driver channel for the dating app. On Mastodon and in most of the Fediverse, your account is both your login and your identity. On (streams) and Forte, you can have multiple fully independent identities, each with its own name, its own ID, its own profile, its own contacts, its own posts and conversations, its own settings etc. etc., all behind one and the same login. It's like having multiple Mastodon accounts behind one login. That way, users don't have to reveal to everyone who knows their official daily-driver channel that they're using this dating app.
Also, Mastodon is hard-coded to 500 characters. You literally have to soft-fork it and edit the source code to change the limit. Both (streams) and Forte are essentially unlimited in characters (their actual character limit is over 24 million).
Privacy and security are much higher on (streams) and Forte than on Mastodon, in fact, much higher than most Fediverse users can even imagine. Private messages are actually literally private. On Mastodon, a direct message only defines whom it's sent to. On (streams) and Forte, permissions come into play. The start post in a conversation defines who is allowed to see the conversation. Not only that post, but all comments as well. It's literally impossible to pull someone else into an existing private conversation by mentioning because that someone simply isn't allowed to see anything in the conversation.
So when you're chatting with a woman via PM, and she dislikes you, she can't shame or dogpile you by pulling her friends into the conversation.
On top of that, although even Friendica already had quote-posts since 2010, private messages cannot be quote-posted.
For a developer, all it takes to build this is PHP plus database know-how. Like the whole rest of the family, (streams) and Forte don't need anything more than a LAMP stack. No Ruby on Rails, no Elixir, no TypeScript or Vue.js or any other JavaScript, no .NET.
Deploying a (streams) or Forte app is easy, too: Create a public git repository for it, keep it there, and server admins can add your repository to their servers and activate your app server-side. Both (streams) and Forte are very modular and designed to be easy to expand.
Most of this would be possible with Hubzilla as well which is much bigger in terms of users and available servers. However, Hubzilla has got one disadvantage: Its directory only shows Hubzilla and (streams) channels, i.e. channels that use Hubzilla's native Zot protocol. That's because ActivityPub support on Hubzilla is provided by another app, it's optional, it's off by default, and the directory can't tie into it. On (streams), ActivityPub support is still optional, but more advanced than on Hubzilla, built into the core and on by default. And Forte doesn't support anything else than ActivityPub.
In theory, it should be possible to build such a dating app for all three.
Also, yes, in theory, channels that use such a dating app can connect to Mastodon. But Mastodon users couldn't use that dating app. Mastodon simply doesn't have any support for profile fields which it itself doesn't have. Also, Mastodon is too unsecure, and meaningful conversations are difficult if one side is limited to 500 characters. And I would hate to see this dating app bound hard to Mastodon's culture and Mastodon's unwritten rules, neither of which take the Fediverse outside of Mastodon into account.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #MastodonCulture #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #FediDate -
@Quasit I wouldn't build it on Mastodon. Nor would I build it from scratch and then against Mastodon, only Mastodon and nothing but Mastodon. The Fediverse is not only much more than Mastodon, but technologically much more diverse than just Mastodon.
The best way would be to build it as an add-on (a so-called "app") for (streams) or Forte. That way, you would neither have to deal with Mastodon's limitations (yes, Mastodon is very limited although this isn't apparent to those of its users who don't know anything else), nor would you have to develop Fediverse server software from scratch.
In case you don't know them:
(streams) is the unofficial community name of a very powerful but technically nameless Fediverse application whose code is in the streams repository (https://codeberg.org/streams/streams). It's essentially a Facebook-style social networking application with quite a number of extra features and the second-most recent member of a software family that dates all the way back to Friendica from 2010 (https://friendi.ca). It's a fork of a fork of three forks of a fork (of a fork?) of Hubzilla (https://hubzilla.org) which, in turn, was reworked from a fork of a fork of what's now Friendica.
And Forte (https://codeberg.org/fortified/forte) is a fork of the streams repository that's very similar to (streams) itself.
All this was originally done by one and the same developer, a professional in IT and software for close to half a century.
Here is an article I've put together with tables that compare Mastodon, Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte: https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/item/0a75de76-eb27-4149-b708-f20b2f79d392
Unlike Mastodon which has only got four general-purpose profile fields in addition to the profile text, both (streams) and Forte already come with the profile fields that a good dating app would need such as:- pronouns (pick one out of 3 or none at all)
- birthday (from which the age is calculated)
- six free-text location fields, even including Facebook-style "hometown" where you used to live; you can select for yourself how far you want to go into detail with revealing your location
- gender (pick one out of 14 or none at all)
- marital status (pick one out of 31 or none at all) plus who plus date since
- sexual preference (pick one out of 9 or none at all)
- a separate keyword field
- political views
- religious views
- hobbies/interests
- likes
- dislikes
- other channels/Fediverse identities
- musical interests
- books/literature
- television
- film/dance/culture/entertainment
- love/romance
- work/employment
- school/education
A dating app could easily tie into the directory and make use of these profile fields. It could use a tag of its own in the keyword field so that it only shows channels that use this app (I'm not sure if it's possible to detect which channel has which apps installed).
One big advantage for users is that they don't have to use their daily-driver channel for the dating app. On Mastodon and in most of the Fediverse, your account is both your login and your identity. On (streams) and Forte, you can have multiple fully independent identities, each with its own name, its own ID, its own profile, its own contacts, its own posts and conversations, its own settings etc. etc., all behind one and the same login. It's like having multiple Mastodon accounts behind one login. That way, users don't have to reveal to everyone who knows their official daily-driver channel that they're using this dating app.
Also, Mastodon is hard-coded to 500 characters. You literally have to soft-fork it and edit the source code to change the limit. Both (streams) and Forte are essentially unlimited in characters (their actual character limit is over 24 million).
Privacy and security are much higher on (streams) and Forte than on Mastodon, in fact, much higher than most Fediverse users can even imagine. Private messages are actually literally private. On Mastodon, a direct message only defines whom it's sent to. On (streams) and Forte, permissions come into play. The start post in a conversation defines who is allowed to see the conversation. Not only that post, but all comments as well. It's literally impossible to pull someone else into an existing private conversation by mentioning because that someone simply isn't allowed to see anything in the conversation.
So when you're chatting with a woman via PM, and she dislikes you, she can't shame or dogpile you by pulling her friends into the conversation.
On top of that, although even Friendica already had quote-posts since 2010, private messages cannot be quote-posted.
For a developer, all it takes to build this is PHP plus database know-how. Like the whole rest of the family, (streams) and Forte don't need anything more than a LAMP stack. No Ruby on Rails, no Elixir, no TypeScript or Vue.js or any other JavaScript, no .NET.
Deploying a (streams) or Forte app is easy, too: Create a public git repository for it, keep it there, and server admins can add your repository to their servers and activate your app server-side. Both (streams) and Forte are very modular and designed to be easy to expand.
Most of this would be possible with Hubzilla as well which is much bigger in terms of users and available servers. However, Hubzilla has got one disadvantage: Its directory only shows Hubzilla and (streams) channels, i.e. channels that use Hubzilla's native Zot protocol. That's because ActivityPub support on Hubzilla is provided by another app, it's optional, it's off by default, and the directory can't tie into it. On (streams), ActivityPub support is still optional, but more advanced than on Hubzilla, built into the core and on by default. And Forte doesn't support anything else than ActivityPub.
In theory, it should be possible to build such a dating app for all three.
Also, yes, in theory, channels that use such a dating app can connect to Mastodon. But Mastodon users couldn't use that dating app. Mastodon simply doesn't have any support for profile fields which it itself doesn't have. Also, Mastodon is too unsecure, and meaningful conversations are difficult if one side is limited to 500 characters. And I would hate to see this dating app bound hard to Mastodon's culture and Mastodon's unwritten rules, neither of which take the Fediverse outside of Mastodon into account.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #MastodonCulture #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #FediDate -
@Hazelnoot My goal is to get alt-texts and image descriptions right. As right as possible.
My goal is to not be sanctioned and/or lectured by the alt-text police for allegedly being lazy and/or careless.
In order to achieve that, I must be ahead of everyone's requirements. Whatever these requirements may be.
But in order to achieve that, I must know their requirements. Everyone's requirements.
If you want me to follow your rules, I need to know your rules.
Right now, I'm probably vastly overcompliant with everyone's rules with only a few exceptions that I can't comply with (alt-texts must not be longer than 200 or 125 or 100 characters, posts in the Fediverse must not be longer than 500 characters, all of the text in an image must always be transcribed in the alt-text etc.).
This way, I hope that my image posts will stay in compliance with existing image description quality standards for a few years, and when they no longer are, they're so old that nobody demands I upgrade my image descriptions to then-current standards.
tl;dr: "Just do it" doesn't cut it. Just doing it is likely to get you sanctioned because you don't do it well enough. And something is no longer better than nothing.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #AltTextPolice #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #MastodonCulture -
@Hazelnoot My goal is to get alt-texts and image descriptions right. As right as possible.
My goal is to not be sanctioned and/or lectured by the alt-text police for allegedly being lazy and/or careless.
In order to achieve that, I must be ahead of everyone's requirements. Whatever these requirements may be.
But in order to achieve that, I must know their requirements. Everyone's requirements.
If you want me to follow your rules, I need to know your rules.
Right now, I'm probably vastly overcompliant with everyone's rules with only a few exceptions that I can't comply with (alt-texts must not be longer than 200 or 125 or 100 characters, posts in the Fediverse must not be longer than 500 characters, all of the text in an image must always be transcribed in the alt-text etc.).
This way, I hope that my image posts will stay in compliance with existing image description quality standards for a few years, and when they no longer are, they're so old that nobody demands I upgrade my image descriptions to then-current standards.
tl;dr: "Just do it" doesn't cut it. Just doing it is likely to get you sanctioned because you don't do it well enough. And something is no longer better than nothing.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #AltTextPolice #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #MastodonCulture -
@Hazelnoot My goal is to get alt-texts and image descriptions right. As right as possible.
My goal is to not be sanctioned and/or lectured by the alt-text police for allegedly being lazy and/or careless.
In order to achieve that, I must be ahead of everyone's requirements. Whatever these requirements may be.
But in order to achieve that, I must know their requirements. Everyone's requirements.
If you want me to follow your rules, I need to know your rules.
Right now, I'm probably vastly overcompliant with everyone's rules with only a few exceptions that I can't comply with (alt-texts must not be longer than 200 or 125 or 100 characters, posts in the Fediverse must not be longer than 500 characters, all of the text in an image must always be transcribed in the alt-text etc.).
This way, I hope that my image posts will stay in compliance with existing image description quality standards for a few years, and when they no longer are, they're so old that nobody demands I upgrade my image descriptions to then-current standards.
tl;dr: "Just do it" doesn't cut it. Just doing it is likely to get you sanctioned because you don't do it well enough. And something is no longer better than nothing.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #AltTextPolice #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #MastodonCulture -
@Hazelnoot My goal is to get alt-texts and image descriptions right. As right as possible.
My goal is to not be sanctioned and/or lectured by the alt-text police for allegedly being lazy and/or careless.
In order to achieve that, I must be ahead of everyone's requirements. Whatever these requirements may be.
But in order to achieve that, I must know their requirements. Everyone's requirements.
If you want me to follow your rules, I need to know your rules.
Right now, I'm probably vastly overcompliant with everyone's rules with only a few exceptions that I can't comply with (alt-texts must not be longer than 200 or 125 or 100 characters, posts in the Fediverse must not be longer than 500 characters, all of the text in an image must always be transcribed in the alt-text etc.).
This way, I hope that my image posts will stay in compliance with existing image description quality standards for a few years, and when they no longer are, they're so old that nobody demands I upgrade my image descriptions to then-current standards.
tl;dr: "Just do it" doesn't cut it. Just doing it is likely to get you sanctioned because you don't do it well enough. And something is no longer better than nothing.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #AltTextPolice #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #MastodonCulture -
@Hazelnoot My goal is to get alt-texts and image descriptions right. As right as possible.
My goal is to not be sanctioned and/or lectured by the alt-text police for allegedly being lazy and/or careless.
In order to achieve that, I must be ahead of everyone's requirements. Whatever these requirements may be.
But in order to achieve that, I must know their requirements. Everyone's requirements.
If you want me to follow your rules, I need to know your rules.
Right now, I'm probably vastly overcompliant with everyone's rules with only a few exceptions that I can't comply with (alt-texts must not be longer than 200 or 125 or 100 characters, posts in the Fediverse must not be longer than 500 characters, all of the text in an image must always be transcribed in the alt-text etc.).
This way, I hope that my image posts will stay in compliance with existing image description quality standards for a few years, and when they no longer are, they're so old that nobody demands I upgrade my image descriptions to then-current standards.
tl;dr: "Just do it" doesn't cut it. Just doing it is likely to get you sanctioned because you don't do it well enough. And something is no longer better than nothing.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #AltTextPolice #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #MastodonCulture -
@[18+!!] saph I'm not an artist, but I really need to know the definition of "helpful" in the context of "helpful alt-text". What are the requirements for alt-text to count as "helpful"?
It must be 100% accurate, I guess that's a given. This also means that it must be 100% written by hand as opposed to AI-generated.
But what are the minimum requirements in terms of details for an alt-text to be helpful?
Can alt-text be too long/too detailed to be helpful?
I'm going to limit my alt-texts to a maximum of 512 characters. Misskey, Sharkey, Iceshrimp-JS and the other Misskey forks automatically delete any alt-text that's longer than 512 characters, making it appear like I hadn't provided any alt-text to begin with, that's why. Newspaper scans aside, can alt-text with no more than 512 characters be too lacking in detail to be helpful?
What if, in addition to an alt-text with a maximum of 512 characters, I also provide a much longer and much more detailed image description in the post text? (My character limit is not 500, but over 16.7 million. I can post long descriptions with tens of thousands of characters in one piece, and I have done so in the past.)
Would that be acceptable to provide the details in description that do not fit into an alt-text of no more than 512 characters?
Or is that unacceptable because the description in the alt-text must be as detailed as required, and additional descriptions in the post don't count?
Or is that unacceptable because there must only be one description to each image, namely in the alt-text and only in the alt-text?
Or is that unacceptable because it makes my post longer than 500 characters?
Are explanations and other additional information about the image allowed in the post text? Because they are not allowed in the alt-text because some people cannot access alt-text.
Or must explanations etc. absolutely be in the alt-text in order for the alt-text to be "helpful" enough?
Must they even be only in the alt-text so that the post never exceeds 500 characters?
What if I can't describe and explain my images in a maximum of 512 characters? What if I can't describe and explain my images in a maximum of 1,500 characters either, but I absolutely must describe and explain them in the alt-text?
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters -
@[18+!!] saph I'm not an artist, but I really need to know the definition of "helpful" in the context of "helpful alt-text". What are the requirements for alt-text to count as "helpful"?
It must be 100% accurate, I guess that's a given. This also means that it must be 100% written by hand as opposed to AI-generated.
But what are the minimum requirements in terms of details for an alt-text to be helpful?
Can alt-text be too long/too detailed to be helpful?
I'm going to limit my alt-texts to a maximum of 512 characters. Misskey, Sharkey, Iceshrimp-JS and the other Misskey forks automatically delete any alt-text that's longer than 512 characters, making it appear like I hadn't provided any alt-text to begin with, that's why. Newspaper scans aside, can alt-text with no more than 512 characters be too lacking in detail to be helpful?
What if, in addition to an alt-text with a maximum of 512 characters, I also provide a much longer and much more detailed image description in the post text? (My character limit is not 500, but over 16.7 million. I can post long descriptions with tens of thousands of characters in one piece, and I have done so in the past.)
Would that be acceptable to provide the details in description that do not fit into an alt-text of no more than 512 characters?
Or is that unacceptable because the description in the alt-text must be as detailed as required, and additional descriptions in the post don't count?
Or is that unacceptable because there must only be one description to each image, namely in the alt-text and only in the alt-text?
Or is that unacceptable because it makes my post longer than 500 characters?
Are explanations and other additional information about the image allowed in the post text? Because they are not allowed in the alt-text because some people cannot access alt-text.
Or must explanations etc. absolutely be in the alt-text in order for the alt-text to be "helpful" enough?
Must they even be only in the alt-text so that the post never exceeds 500 characters?
What if I can't describe and explain my images in a maximum of 512 characters? What if I can't describe and explain my images in a maximum of 1,500 characters either, but I absolutely must describe and explain them in the alt-text?
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters -
@[18+!!] saph I'm not an artist, but I really need to know the definition of "helpful" in the context of "helpful alt-text". What are the requirements for alt-text to count as "helpful"?
It must be 100% accurate, I guess that's a given. This also means that it must be 100% written by hand as opposed to AI-generated.
But what are the minimum requirements in terms of details for an alt-text to be helpful?
Can alt-text be too long/too detailed to be helpful?
I'm going to limit my alt-texts to a maximum of 512 characters. Misskey, Sharkey, Iceshrimp-JS and the other Misskey forks automatically delete any alt-text that's longer than 512 characters, making it appear like I hadn't provided any alt-text to begin with, that's why. Newspaper scans aside, can alt-text with no more than 512 characters be too lacking in detail to be helpful?
What if, in addition to an alt-text with a maximum of 512 characters, I also provide a much longer and much more detailed image description in the post text? (My character limit is not 500, but over 16.7 million. I can post long descriptions with tens of thousands of characters in one piece, and I have done so in the past.)
Would that be acceptable to provide the details in description that do not fit into an alt-text of no more than 512 characters?
Or is that unacceptable because the description in the alt-text must be as detailed as required, and additional descriptions in the post don't count?
Or is that unacceptable because there must only be one description to each image, namely in the alt-text and only in the alt-text?
Or is that unacceptable because it makes my post longer than 500 characters?
Are explanations and other additional information about the image allowed in the post text? Because they are not allowed in the alt-text because some people cannot access alt-text.
Or must explanations etc. absolutely be in the alt-text in order for the alt-text to be "helpful" enough?
Must they even be only in the alt-text so that the post never exceeds 500 characters?
What if I can't describe and explain my images in a maximum of 512 characters? What if I can't describe and explain my images in a maximum of 1,500 characters either, but I absolutely must describe and explain them in the alt-text?
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters -
@[18+!!] saph I'm not an artist, but I really need to know the definition of "helpful" in the context of "helpful alt-text". What are the requirements for alt-text to count as "helpful"?
It must be 100% accurate, I guess that's a given. This also means that it must be 100% written by hand as opposed to AI-generated.
But what are the minimum requirements in terms of details for an alt-text to be helpful?
Can alt-text be too long/too detailed to be helpful?
I'm going to limit my alt-texts to a maximum of 512 characters. Misskey, Sharkey, Iceshrimp-JS and the other Misskey forks automatically delete any alt-text that's longer than 512 characters, making it appear like I hadn't provided any alt-text to begin with, that's why. Newspaper scans aside, can alt-text with no more than 512 characters be too lacking in detail to be helpful?
What if, in addition to an alt-text with a maximum of 512 characters, I also provide a much longer and much more detailed image description in the post text? (My character limit is not 500, but over 16.7 million. I can post long descriptions with tens of thousands of characters in one piece, and I have done so in the past.)
Would that be acceptable to provide the details in description that do not fit into an alt-text of no more than 512 characters?
Or is that unacceptable because the description in the alt-text must be as detailed as required, and additional descriptions in the post don't count?
Or is that unacceptable because there must only be one description to each image, namely in the alt-text and only in the alt-text?
Or is that unacceptable because it makes my post longer than 500 characters?
Are explanations and other additional information about the image allowed in the post text? Because they are not allowed in the alt-text because some people cannot access alt-text.
Or must explanations etc. absolutely be in the alt-text in order for the alt-text to be "helpful" enough?
Must they even be only in the alt-text so that the post never exceeds 500 characters?
What if I can't describe and explain my images in a maximum of 512 characters? What if I can't describe and explain my images in a maximum of 1,500 characters either, but I absolutely must describe and explain them in the alt-text?
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters -
@[18+!!] saph I'm not an artist, but I really need to know the definition of "helpful" in the context of "helpful alt-text". What are the requirements for alt-text to count as "helpful"?
It must be 100% accurate, I guess that's a given. This also means that it must be 100% written by hand as opposed to AI-generated.
But what are the minimum requirements in terms of details for an alt-text to be helpful?
Can alt-text be too long/too detailed to be helpful?
I'm going to limit my alt-texts to a maximum of 512 characters. Misskey, Sharkey, Iceshrimp-JS and the other Misskey forks automatically delete any alt-text that's longer than 512 characters, making it appear like I hadn't provided any alt-text to begin with, that's why. Newspaper scans aside, can alt-text with no more than 512 characters be too lacking in detail to be helpful?
What if, in addition to an alt-text with a maximum of 512 characters, I also provide a much longer and much more detailed image description in the post text? (My character limit is not 500, but over 16.7 million. I can post long descriptions with tens of thousands of characters in one piece, and I have done so in the past.)
Would that be acceptable to provide the details in description that do not fit into an alt-text of no more than 512 characters?
Or is that unacceptable because the description in the alt-text must be as detailed as required, and additional descriptions in the post don't count?
Or is that unacceptable because there must only be one description to each image, namely in the alt-text and only in the alt-text?
Or is that unacceptable because it makes my post longer than 500 characters?
Are explanations and other additional information about the image allowed in the post text? Because they are not allowed in the alt-text because some people cannot access alt-text.
Or must explanations etc. absolutely be in the alt-text in order for the alt-text to be "helpful" enough?
Must they even be only in the alt-text so that the post never exceeds 500 characters?
What if I can't describe and explain my images in a maximum of 512 characters? What if I can't describe and explain my images in a maximum of 1,500 characters either, but I absolutely must describe and explain them in the alt-text?
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters -
@hosh The alt-text police of the Mastodon Home Owners' Association (Mastodon HOA) have a tendency to be overzealous. And they don't talk to each other. They all act for themselves as lone wolves with exactly no coordination amongst each other whatsoever. You never know what kinds of rules they whip up for themselves.
Chances are that they only let image descriptions count that come directly with the image. If they acknowledge an image description outside the alt-text, it must be in the post itself. Not as an external link, but the description text itself.
Besides, at least some in the Mastodon HOA have problems with external links. And I don't just mean that they don't trust embedded links whose URL they can't see in plain sight, the kind that Hubzilla can create and Mastodon can't (not that Hubzilla couldn't fake a plain-sight link by embedding a different URL than the visible).
I don't mean either that probably a majority of Mastodon users don't even recognise embedded links without a visible URL as such because they don't know that such a thing can exist in the Fediverse, because Mastodon can't make them.
No, what I mean is the notion that external links for explanations are inherently bad from an accessibility point of view. "Mastodon" (as in how Mastodon users experience the Fediverse, i.e. the Mastodon Web UI or any of the popular mobile phone apps) is sufficiently accessible. But the Web outside of "Mastodon" (same definition again) may not be accessible enough.
A few years ago, I've literally read a Mastodon toot in which someone said that explanations must not be linked to. Linked websites have a risk of not being accessible. Explanations must always be directly in the same post. Apparently, they thought that everything and anything can be explained and broken down until everyone understands it within 500 characters.
This is also why Mastodon users tend to explain their images in the alt-text. It's only there where they have at least halfway enough characters for an explanation, 1,500 per image as opposed to usually only 500 in the post text. (On Mastodon, much unlike Hubzilla, the alt-text is a separate database field that exists separately for each of the up to four images per message.)
That is, explanations must never go into the alt-text because there are people who cannot open alt-texts to read them. But nobody on Mastodon knows that.
It should be obvious that what counts for explanations counts for visual descriptions just as well.
And in fact, regarding Hubzilla articles, they're actually right. I've once pointed an actually blind screen reader user to an article on my Hubzilla channel. She said she couldn't even navigate the Web interface. She literally couldn't get to the text body of the article to have it read out by her screen reader.
Hubzilla's Web interface, no matter which app is opened, is not accessible. It does not work with screen readers. It's largely still stuck in 2012 when nobdy made any ruckus about the accessibility of hobbyist Web projects.
The only reason why at least some blind or visually-impaired users can read our Hubzilla posts and comments and DMs is because they're all on Mastodon, and they read our content either on Mastodon's Web UI or a Mastodon app that supports screen readers. But they do not read our content at the source. Because they can't.
I actually took into consideration linking to my long image descriptions. But my idea was not to link to a Hubzilla article, nor to a Hubzilla wiki or a Hubzilla card. No, my idea was to write a plain HTML document, upload it to my file space and link to that.
I've dropped that idea for various reasons:- Generally, still, external links are frowned upon.
- I don't know if plain HTML is accessible without a CSS. And I can't add a CSS to this HTML if the HTML document is not served to the recipient by a Web server, but by a file server.
- I don't know how Google Chrome on Android or Safari on an iPhone will react when they access an HTML document on a file space. Will they display it as a website? Or will they download it onto the device as a file without opening it because, again, it is served to them not by a Web server, but by a file server?
- Mobile users dislike opening websites from apps because they dislike their browser popping open. And on Mastodon, much unlike Hubzilla, almost everyone is on a phone and a dedicated app almost all the time.
- This also means that mobile users would have the image and the description in two separate apps. The image in their Mastodon app, the description in their browser.
- I would need much more description.
Right now, when I have multiple images, my long descriptions consist of a preamble that contains all necessary explanations and, if applicable, visual descriptions of elements that are common to all images. The individual descriptions for each image follow.
But if I had one image description file per image, then each image description would need the whole preamble included. I can't just add the preamble to the first description file.
What if someone opens the third description file first? They'll only have a very incomplete description. And linking to the first description file is inconvenient. I would have to know the URL of the first file before completing and uploading the other files because I'd have to include the URL of the first file in them. And the users would have to have three documents open (the image post, the description of the image they're interested in, the description of the first image with the preamble) just to experience one image. Spread across two phone apps.
And that's why I can't put my additional long description in an external document.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #AltTextPolice #MastodonHOA #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #MastodonCulture -
@hosh The alt-text police of the Mastodon Home Owners' Association (Mastodon HOA) have a tendency to be overzealous. And they don't talk to each other. They all act for themselves as lone wolves with exactly no coordination amongst each other whatsoever. You never know what kinds of rules they whip up for themselves.
Chances are that they only let image descriptions count that come directly with the image. If they acknowledge an image description outside the alt-text, it must be in the post itself. Not as an external link, but the description text itself.
Besides, at least some in the Mastodon HOA have problems with external links. And I don't just mean that they don't trust embedded links whose URL they can't see in plain sight, the kind that Hubzilla can create and Mastodon can't (not that Hubzilla couldn't fake a plain-sight link by embedding a different URL than the visible).
I don't mean either that probably a majority of Mastodon users don't even recognise embedded links without a visible URL as such because they don't know that such a thing can exist in the Fediverse, because Mastodon can't make them.
No, what I mean is the notion that external links for explanations are inherently bad from an accessibility point of view. "Mastodon" (as in how Mastodon users experience the Fediverse, i.e. the Mastodon Web UI or any of the popular mobile phone apps) is sufficiently accessible. But the Web outside of "Mastodon" (same definition again) may not be accessible enough.
A few years ago, I've literally read a Mastodon toot in which someone said that explanations must not be linked to. Linked websites have a risk of not being accessible. Explanations must always be directly in the same post. Apparently, they thought that everything and anything can be explained and broken down until everyone understands it within 500 characters.
This is also why Mastodon users tend to explain their images in the alt-text. It's only there where they have at least halfway enough characters for an explanation, 1,500 per image as opposed to usually only 500 in the post text. (On Mastodon, much unlike Hubzilla, the alt-text is a separate database field that exists separately for each of the up to four images per message.)
That is, explanations must never go into the alt-text because there are people who cannot open alt-texts to read them. But nobody on Mastodon knows that.
It should be obvious that what counts for explanations counts for visual descriptions just as well.
And in fact, regarding Hubzilla articles, they're actually right. I've once pointed an actually blind screen reader user to an article on my Hubzilla channel. She said she couldn't even navigate the Web interface. She literally couldn't get to the text body of the article to have it read out by her screen reader.
Hubzilla's Web interface, no matter which app is opened, is not accessible. It does not work with screen readers. It's largely still stuck in 2012 when nobdy made any ruckus about the accessibility of hobbyist Web projects.
The only reason why at least some blind or visually-impaired users can read our Hubzilla posts and comments and DMs is because they're all on Mastodon, and they read our content either on Mastodon's Web UI or a Mastodon app that supports screen readers. But they do not read our content at the source. Because they can't.
I actually took into consideration linking to my long image descriptions. But my idea was not to link to a Hubzilla article, nor to a Hubzilla wiki or a Hubzilla card. No, my idea was to write a plain HTML document, upload it to my file space and link to that.
I've dropped that idea for various reasons:- Generally, still, external links are frowned upon.
- I don't know if plain HTML is accessible without a CSS. And I can't add a CSS to this HTML if the HTML document is not served to the recipient by a Web server, but by a file server.
- I don't know how Google Chrome on Android or Safari on an iPhone will react when they access an HTML document on a file space. Will they display it as a website? Or will they download it onto the device as a file without opening it because, again, it is served to them not by a Web server, but by a file server?
- Mobile users dislike opening websites from apps because they dislike their browser popping open. And on Mastodon, much unlike Hubzilla, almost everyone is on a phone and a dedicated app almost all the time.
- This also means that mobile users would have the image and the description in two separate apps. The image in their Mastodon app, the description in their browser.
- I would need much more description.
Right now, when I have multiple images, my long descriptions consist of a preamble that contains all necessary explanations and, if applicable, visual descriptions of elements that are common to all images. The individual descriptions for each image follow.
But if I had one image description file per image, then each image description would need the whole preamble included. I can't just add the preamble to the first description file.
What if someone opens the third description file first? They'll only have a very incomplete description. And linking to the first description file is inconvenient. I would have to know the URL of the first file before completing and uploading the other files because I'd have to include the URL of the first file in them. And the users would have to have three documents open (the image post, the description of the image they're interested in, the description of the first image with the preamble) just to experience one image. Spread across two phone apps.
And that's why I can't put my additional long description in an external document.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #AltTextPolice #MastodonHOA #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #MastodonCulture -
@hosh The alt-text police of the Mastodon Home Owners' Association (Mastodon HOA) have a tendency to be overzealous. And they don't talk to each other. They all act for themselves as lone wolves with exactly no coordination amongst each other whatsoever. You never know what kinds of rules they whip up for themselves.
Chances are that they only let image descriptions count that come directly with the image. If they acknowledge an image description outside the alt-text, it must be in the post itself. Not as an external link, but the description text itself.
Besides, at least some in the Mastodon HOA have problems with external links. And I don't just mean that they don't trust embedded links whose URL they can't see in plain sight, the kind that Hubzilla can create and Mastodon can't (not that Hubzilla couldn't fake a plain-sight link by embedding a different URL than the visible).
I don't mean either that probably a majority of Mastodon users don't even recognise embedded links without a visible URL as such because they don't know that such a thing can exist in the Fediverse, because Mastodon can't make them.
No, what I mean is the notion that external links for explanations are inherently bad from an accessibility point of view. "Mastodon" (as in how Mastodon users experience the Fediverse, i.e. the Mastodon Web UI or any of the popular mobile phone apps) is sufficiently accessible. But the Web outside of "Mastodon" (same definition again) may not be accessible enough.
A few years ago, I've literally read a Mastodon toot in which someone said that explanations must not be linked to. Linked websites have a risk of not being accessible. Explanations must always be directly in the same post. Apparently, they thought that everything and anything can be explained and broken down until everyone understands it within 500 characters.
This is also why Mastodon users tend to explain their images in the alt-text. It's only there where they have at least halfway enough characters for an explanation, 1,500 per image as opposed to usually only 500 in the post text. (On Mastodon, much unlike Hubzilla, the alt-text is a separate database field that exists separately for each of the up to four images per message.)
That is, explanations must never go into the alt-text because there are people who cannot open alt-texts to read them. But nobody on Mastodon knows that.
It should be obvious that what counts for explanations counts for visual descriptions just as well.
And in fact, regarding Hubzilla articles, they're actually right. I've once pointed an actually blind screen reader user to an article on my Hubzilla channel. She said she couldn't even navigate the Web interface. She literally couldn't get to the text body of the article to have it read out by her screen reader.
Hubzilla's Web interface, no matter which app is opened, is not accessible. It does not work with screen readers. It's largely still stuck in 2012 when nobdy made any ruckus about the accessibility of hobbyist Web projects.
The only reason why at least some blind or visually-impaired users can read our Hubzilla posts and comments and DMs is because they're all on Mastodon, and they read our content either on Mastodon's Web UI or a Mastodon app that supports screen readers. But they do not read our content at the source. Because they can't.
I actually took into consideration linking to my long image descriptions. But my idea was not to link to a Hubzilla article, nor to a Hubzilla wiki or a Hubzilla card. No, my idea was to write a plain HTML document, upload it to my file space and link to that.
I've dropped that idea for various reasons:- Generally, still, external links are frowned upon.
- I don't know if plain HTML is accessible without a CSS. And I can't add a CSS to this HTML if the HTML document is not served to the recipient by a Web server, but by a file server.
- I don't know how Google Chrome on Android or Safari on an iPhone will react when they access an HTML document on a file space. Will they display it as a website? Or will they download it onto the device as a file without opening it because, again, it is served to them not by a Web server, but by a file server?
- Mobile users dislike opening websites from apps because they dislike their browser popping open. And on Mastodon, much unlike Hubzilla, almost everyone is on a phone and a dedicated app almost all the time.
- This also means that mobile users would have the image and the description in two separate apps. The image in their Mastodon app, the description in their browser.
- I would need much more description.
Right now, when I have multiple images, my long descriptions consist of a preamble that contains all necessary explanations and, if applicable, visual descriptions of elements that are common to all images. The individual descriptions for each image follow.
But if I had one image description file per image, then each image description would need the whole preamble included. I can't just add the preamble to the first description file.
What if someone opens the third description file first? They'll only have a very incomplete description. And linking to the first description file is inconvenient. I would have to know the URL of the first file before completing and uploading the other files because I'd have to include the URL of the first file in them. And the users would have to have three documents open (the image post, the description of the image they're interested in, the description of the first image with the preamble) just to experience one image. Spread across two phone apps.
And that's why I can't put my additional long description in an external document.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #AltTextPolice #MastodonHOA #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #MastodonCulture -
@hosh The alt-text police of the Mastodon Home Owners' Association (Mastodon HOA) have a tendency to be overzealous. And they don't talk to each other. They all act for themselves as lone wolves with exactly no coordination amongst each other whatsoever. You never know what kinds of rules they whip up for themselves.
Chances are that they only let image descriptions count that come directly with the image. If they acknowledge an image description outside the alt-text, it must be in the post itself. Not as an external link, but the description text itself.
Besides, at least some in the Mastodon HOA have problems with external links. And I don't just mean that they don't trust embedded links whose URL they can't see in plain sight, the kind that Hubzilla can create and Mastodon can't (not that Hubzilla couldn't fake a plain-sight link by embedding a different URL than the visible).
I don't mean either that probably a majority of Mastodon users don't even recognise embedded links without a visible URL as such because they don't know that such a thing can exist in the Fediverse, because Mastodon can't make them.
No, what I mean is the notion that external links for explanations are inherently bad from an accessibility point of view. "Mastodon" (as in how Mastodon users experience the Fediverse, i.e. the Mastodon Web UI or any of the popular mobile phone apps) is sufficiently accessible. But the Web outside of "Mastodon" (same definition again) may not be accessible enough.
A few years ago, I've literally read a Mastodon toot in which someone said that explanations must not be linked to. Linked websites have a risk of not being accessible. Explanations must always be directly in the same post. Apparently, they thought that everything and anything can be explained and broken down until everyone understands it within 500 characters.
This is also why Mastodon users tend to explain their images in the alt-text. It's only there where they have at least halfway enough characters for an explanation, 1,500 per image as opposed to usually only 500 in the post text. (On Mastodon, much unlike Hubzilla, the alt-text is a separate database field that exists separately for each of the up to four images per message.)
That is, explanations must never go into the alt-text because there are people who cannot open alt-texts to read them. But nobody on Mastodon knows that.
It should be obvious that what counts for explanations counts for visual descriptions just as well.
And in fact, regarding Hubzilla articles, they're actually right. I've once pointed an actually blind screen reader user to an article on my Hubzilla channel. She said she couldn't even navigate the Web interface. She literally couldn't get to the text body of the article to have it read out by her screen reader.
Hubzilla's Web interface, no matter which app is opened, is not accessible. It does not work with screen readers. It's largely still stuck in 2012 when nobdy made any ruckus about the accessibility of hobbyist Web projects.
The only reason why at least some blind or visually-impaired users can read our Hubzilla posts and comments and DMs is because they're all on Mastodon, and they read our content either on Mastodon's Web UI or a Mastodon app that supports screen readers. But they do not read our content at the source. Because they can't.
I actually took into consideration linking to my long image descriptions. But my idea was not to link to a Hubzilla article, nor to a Hubzilla wiki or a Hubzilla card. No, my idea was to write a plain HTML document, upload it to my file space and link to that.
I've dropped that idea for various reasons:- Generally, still, external links are frowned upon.
- I don't know if plain HTML is accessible without a CSS. And I can't add a CSS to this HTML if the HTML document is not served to the recipient by a Web server, but by a file server.
- I don't know how Google Chrome on Android or Safari on an iPhone will react when they access an HTML document on a file space. Will they display it as a website? Or will they download it onto the device as a file without opening it because, again, it is served to them not by a Web server, but by a file server?
- Mobile users dislike opening websites from apps because they dislike their browser popping open. And on Mastodon, much unlike Hubzilla, almost everyone is on a phone and a dedicated app almost all the time.
- This also means that mobile users would have the image and the description in two separate apps. The image in their Mastodon app, the description in their browser.
- I would need much more description.
Right now, when I have multiple images, my long descriptions consist of a preamble that contains all necessary explanations and, if applicable, visual descriptions of elements that are common to all images. The individual descriptions for each image follow.
But if I had one image description file per image, then each image description would need the whole preamble included. I can't just add the preamble to the first description file.
What if someone opens the third description file first? They'll only have a very incomplete description. And linking to the first description file is inconvenient. I would have to know the URL of the first file before completing and uploading the other files because I'd have to include the URL of the first file in them. And the users would have to have three documents open (the image post, the description of the image they're interested in, the description of the first image with the preamble) just to experience one image. Spread across two phone apps.
And that's why I can't put my additional long description in an external document.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #AltTextPolice #MastodonHOA #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #MastodonCulture -
@hosh The alt-text police of the Mastodon Home Owners' Association (Mastodon HOA) have a tendency to be overzealous. And they don't talk to each other. They all act for themselves as lone wolves with exactly no coordination amongst each other whatsoever. You never know what kinds of rules they whip up for themselves.
Chances are that they only let image descriptions count that come directly with the image. If they acknowledge an image description outside the alt-text, it must be in the post itself. Not as an external link, but the description text itself.
Besides, at least some in the Mastodon HOA have problems with external links. And I don't just mean that they don't trust embedded links whose URL they can't see in plain sight, the kind that Hubzilla can create and Mastodon can't (not that Hubzilla couldn't fake a plain-sight link by embedding a different URL than the visible).
I don't mean either that probably a majority of Mastodon users don't even recognise embedded links without a visible URL as such because they don't know that such a thing can exist in the Fediverse, because Mastodon can't make them.
No, what I mean is the notion that external links for explanations are inherently bad from an accessibility point of view. "Mastodon" (as in how Mastodon users experience the Fediverse, i.e. the Mastodon Web UI or any of the popular mobile phone apps) is sufficiently accessible. But the Web outside of "Mastodon" (same definition again) may not be accessible enough.
A few years ago, I've literally read a Mastodon toot in which someone said that explanations must not be linked to. Linked websites have a risk of not being accessible. Explanations must always be directly in the same post. Apparently, they thought that everything and anything can be explained and broken down until everyone understands it within 500 characters.
This is also why Mastodon users tend to explain their images in the alt-text. It's only there where they have at least halfway enough characters for an explanation, 1,500 per image as opposed to usually only 500 in the post text. (On Mastodon, much unlike Hubzilla, the alt-text is a separate database field that exists separately for each of the up to four images per message.)
That is, explanations must never go into the alt-text because there are people who cannot open alt-texts to read them. But nobody on Mastodon knows that.
It should be obvious that what counts for explanations counts for visual descriptions just as well.
And in fact, regarding Hubzilla articles, they're actually right. I've once pointed an actually blind screen reader user to an article on my Hubzilla channel. She said she couldn't even navigate the Web interface. She literally couldn't get to the text body of the article to have it read out by her screen reader.
Hubzilla's Web interface, no matter which app is opened, is not accessible. It does not work with screen readers. It's largely still stuck in 2012 when nobdy made any ruckus about the accessibility of hobbyist Web projects.
The only reason why at least some blind or visually-impaired users can read our Hubzilla posts and comments and DMs is because they're all on Mastodon, and they read our content either on Mastodon's Web UI or a Mastodon app that supports screen readers. But they do not read our content at the source. Because they can't.
I actually took into consideration linking to my long image descriptions. But my idea was not to link to a Hubzilla article, nor to a Hubzilla wiki or a Hubzilla card. No, my idea was to write a plain HTML document, upload it to my file space and link to that.
I've dropped that idea for various reasons:- Generally, still, external links are frowned upon.
- I don't know if plain HTML is accessible without a CSS. And I can't add a CSS to this HTML if the HTML document is not served to the recipient by a Web server, but by a file server.
- I don't know how Google Chrome on Android or Safari on an iPhone will react when they access an HTML document on a file space. Will they display it as a website? Or will they download it onto the device as a file without opening it because, again, it is served to them not by a Web server, but by a file server?
- Mobile users dislike opening websites from apps because they dislike their browser popping open. And on Mastodon, much unlike Hubzilla, almost everyone is on a phone and a dedicated app almost all the time.
- This also means that mobile users would have the image and the description in two separate apps. The image in their Mastodon app, the description in their browser.
- I would need much more description.
Right now, when I have multiple images, my long descriptions consist of a preamble that contains all necessary explanations and, if applicable, visual descriptions of elements that are common to all images. The individual descriptions for each image follow.
But if I had one image description file per image, then each image description would need the whole preamble included. I can't just add the preamble to the first description file.
What if someone opens the third description file first? They'll only have a very incomplete description. And linking to the first description file is inconvenient. I would have to know the URL of the first file before completing and uploading the other files because I'd have to include the URL of the first file in them. And the users would have to have three documents open (the image post, the description of the image they're interested in, the description of the first image with the preamble) just to experience one image. Spread across two phone apps.
And that's why I can't put my additional long description in an external document.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #AltTextPolice #MastodonHOA #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #MastodonCulture -
CW: Long posts vs insufficiently described images: I can't win either way; CW: long (over 3,500 characters), Fediverse meta, Fediverse-beyond-Mastodon meta, alt-text meta, image description meta, content warning meta, character limit meta
On the one hand, I have to go out of my way and write two image descriptions for each one of my original images. One is short and goes into the alt-text, and I'm going to limit all my future alt-text to a maximum of 512 characters (otherwise users on Misskey, Sharkey etc. will believe I haven't written any alt-text because they won't receive any due to a bug).
The other one is enormous degrees of magnitudes longer than anything most Fediverse users have ever read in the Fediverse. It also contains all explanations necessary to understand the image and its description, and if there's text anywhere within the borders of the image, readable or not, it contains verbatim transcripts of said text.
The nature of my original images requires such long descriptions. Besides, the only way to really be safe from the alt-text police of the Mastodon HOA is to overcomply with whatever minimum standards for good image descriptions anyone of them may have.
On the other hand, the self-same Mastodon HOA is likely to sanction me for the self-same posts. The reason: The posts are way too long. They exceed the limit of 500 characters that's so deeply engrained into Mastodon's culture that many Mastodonians are eager to defend it. Even if I hide them behind a summary with a content warning about the post being long. If I were to appease these Mastodonians, I'd have to underdescribe my images, and I wouldn't be able to explain them at all.
Speaking of underdescribing, I think at least some members of the alt-text police actually don't let image descriptions in the post count. What counts is only the image description in the alt-text. It must be accurate, it must be sufficiently detailed, and it must contain all the text transcripts. In fact, I wouldn't wonder if they demanded sufficient explanations in the alt-text, not knowing that explanations in alt-text are actually a big no-no.
Even if all requirements of a good alt-text by alt-text police standards are met or even exceeded by the image description in the post, chances are the alt-text police will still sanction me if the alt-text doesn't meet these criteria.
When it comes to my original images, even squeezing all that into the 1,500-character limit for alt-texts imposed by Mastodon is pretty much impossible. Squeezing it into the 512-character limit for alt-text imposed by Misskey and its forks is even more impossible.
The only winning move is to not play at all. Curiously, some people are even upset about me rarely posting any images. Although they don't follow me. Although the channel that I use for original images (@Jupiter Rowland's (streams) outlet) has next to no reach, so even if I were to post images again, practically nobody would notice. Although it doesn't even seem that there's much interest in that kind of images in the first place.
But apparently, according to some, posting images with only rudimentary alt-text whipped up in a minute, no long description and no explanations is always so much better than not posting images because it takes so much time and effort to describe them.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #AltTextPolice #MastodonHOA #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #CWContentWarningMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #MastodonCulture