#cwcharacterlimitmeta — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #cwcharacterlimitmeta, aggregated by home.social.
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@Martin Rundkvist I've written an article with several feature comparison tables between- Mastodon
- Friendica
- Hubzilla (rebuilt from a fork of a fork of Friendica by Friendica's creator)
- (streams) (fork of a fork of three forks of a fork (of a fork?) of Hubzilla by the same creator)
- Forte (fork of the streams repository by still the same creator
https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/item/0a75de76-eb27-4149-b708-f20b2f79d392
A few goodies:- Mastodon:
500 characters; requires source code modifications to get more
Friendica:
16,777,215 characters - Friendica:
Can render and create the full gamut of HTML text formatting
Mastodon:
Can only create plain text; can only render a small subset of HTML text formatting - Friendica:
Have as many images pro post as you want
Embed them within the text
Mastodon:
Limited to 4 images
Images can only be file attachments - Friendica:
Shows you all content in the Fediverse just like the author intended it
Mastodon:
"Sanitises" away half the formatting, all embedded images and all images except for the first four, just for the sake of purist microblogging - Mastodon:
Timeline consists of single messages with no context
Friendica:
Timeline consists of complete conversations, all the way back to the start post, with all branches (ignores and blocks notwithstanding) - Mastodon:
Conversations consist of toots and more toots, loosely strung together with mentions
Replies only reach those who are visibly mentioned
Friendica:
Conversations consist of exactly one post and otherwise comments
Replies go from the replier to the thread starter and from there to all participants in the conversation without having to mention anyone - Friendica:
Has groups built in (groups are accounts with special settings)
Mastodon:
Has no support for groups whatsoever, much less its own groups
Most Mastodon users don't even know that the Fediverse has groups - Friendica:
Lets you federate with the whole Fediverse
Lets you federate with diaspora*
Lets you include and remote-control a Bluesky account
At least used to be able to do the same with a Tumblr account or a Twitter account
Lets you crosspost to Dreamwidth, Libertree, LiveJournal and XML-RPC-based blogs like WordPress
Mastodon:
Just barely so federates with the Fediverse
Tries to make everything that isn't Mastodon look broken
Would love for the Fediverse to be only Mastodon - Mastodon:
Makes the whole Fediverse look like Mastodon
Friendica:
Shows you which server software a message came from
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #Mastodon #Friendica -
CW: Account getting away with way subpar alt-texts only because it's too niche with too few followers; CW: long (over 1,700 characters), Fediverse meta, alt-text meta, image description meta, character limit meta
I've just discovered a certain Mastodon account that seems to automatically post images of Second Life avatars. It can be lucky to only have eight followers, one of them being a search engine, the others being Second Life users.
If it had more follower, it would certainly already have met the wrath of the wider Mastodon community, especially the Mastodon HOA, for breaking Mastodon's unwritten rules.
And I'm not even talking about nigh-nudity in some of the images with no warning, no image flagging, no hashtag. I'm talking about the alt-texts that are vastly below Mastodon's requirements and quality standards for alt-texts.
Granted, all things considered, the requirements for good image descriptions by Mastodon's standards have to be extremely hard and tedious to meet, at least by my personal estimations. In fact, they have to be impossible to meet on Mastodon itself due to its tiny character limit, and if this account was somewhere where it could meet these requirements, it'd probably be blocked by loads of Mastodon accounts for its excessively long posts due to the long image descriptions.
But if more Mastodon users knew it right now, it'd probably be blocked by many more Mastodon accounts than follow it.
If you post from virtual worlds into the Fediverse, you simply cannot win in the long run. You'll lose either way.
#SecondLife #Metaverse #VirtualWorld #VirtualWorlds #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #Mastodon #MastodonHOA #MastodonCulture -
CW: Alt-texts for profile images probably becoming mandatory, image descriptions for images in Mastodon link previews probably becoming mandatory, probably even for non-Mastodon users; CW: long (almost 4,500 characters), Fediverse meta, Fediverse-beyond-Mastodon meta, alt-text meta, image description meta, ableism meta
More and more Mastodon users are acting like alt-texts for profile images are becoming mandatory Fediverse-wide. Never mind that they're currently being rolled out by and by and only on Mastodon even.
Here on Hubzilla, they aren't even a thought, also because Hubzilla doesn't know the concept of images having their own dedicated alt-text database field. (Before you ask: Hubzilla handles images and therefore alt-texts in messages vastly differently from Mastodon to begin with.)
At the same time, more and more Mastodon users are acting like image descriptions for the images in the link previews that are generated automatically in Mastodon timelines are becoming mandatory Fediverse-wide. Never mind that Mastodon itself has barely got enough character capacity to describe these preview images at the high level of detail that so many Mastodon users love, what with its meagre default character limit of 500.
Also, never mind that you'll have to edit your post to describe the preview image because it only appears after you've tooted your toot, so you can't see it before you toot your toot.
Also, never mind that everyone outside Hubzilla will get an image description for an image that's entirely absent because they don't have Mastodon-style link previews, because these link previews are a Mastodon-only thing.
Again, this is even worse here on Hubzilla. Unlike Mastodon, Hubzilla has a preview button that lets you look at your message before you actually send it. But Hubzilla doesn't generate link previews. And Hubzilla's preview button doesn't offer you the option to show you what your message will look like on Mastodon.
So I'd have to- write and send my message as usual
- switch to a tab with mastodon.social
- look for my message by using the hashtag search
- check whether Mastodon has generated a link preview, and if so, which image it has chosen
- find a copy of the image with the highest resolution possible;
alternatively, if it's an in-world image from OpenSim, log into OpenSim, travel to that place and take a close look at the place to write a highly detailed image description (takes from five hours to two days) - switch back to my Hubzilla tab
- edit my message
- add the image description
- re-count the characters in the message
- edit the message
- add a long post content warning with the current character count if there is none, and it isn't a comment; edit the character count of the existing long post content warning if there already is one
- save the edit
- discover that Mastodon hasn't recognised my edit as such, and now there are two copies of the same message on Mastodon, the old one without the image description and the new, longer one with the image description
All just to describe an image that isn't even there for my fellow Hubzilla users. Nor is it there for my contacts on Friendica, (streams), Forte, Misskey, Iceshrimp-JS, Iceshrimp.NET, Sharkey, Pleroma, Akkoma, snac2, GoToSocial, Hollo, Socialhome, Mitra, PieFed, Wafrn etc.
By the way, if a message comes from something else than Mastodon, and there's no actual link in it, Mastodon often creates a link preview for the profile or channel page of whoever has sent the message and picks their profile photo as the image for the link preview. Essentially, I'd have to reliably know when Mastodon does that, write two image descriptions for my profile photo (it's a rendering from OpenSim, and I always describe these twice; besides, people should have a shorter description next to my usual detailed description) and copy-paste both into each post for which Mastodon will generate a link preview for my channel page.
Fortunately, Mastodon doesn't show Hubzilla profiles or channels like Hubzilla itself shows them, and neither do Mastodon apps. Otherwise, if Mastodon users figure out that the background image of my channel is part of my channel customisation and not a default Hubzilla Web UI element, they may demand I add an alt-text for the background image, lest I be mass-blocked as an ableist.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Ableist #Ableism #AbleismMeta #CWAbleismMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Hubzilla #MastodonCulture #FediverseCulture #MastodonCentricity #MastodonNormativity -
@🌱🏴🅰️🏳️⚧️🐧🔧📎 Ambiyelp I'm not talking about the visual description in the alt-text.
I'm talking about a wholly separate explanation in the post text body. Like, where you'd write the actual toot. Where you probably only have 500 characters. Where you wrote the above comment. It's there where I want to put the explanation.
The story behind this is as follows:
I keep reading from Mastodon users that alt-texts (yes, actual alt-texts in this case) are useful for sighted people, too, because alt-texts can give them explanations and help them understand what they're looking at. This means that images must not only be described, but also explained if necessary.
On the one hand, I keep telling Mastodon users again and again that explanations do not belong into the alt-text because there are people who can't access and read alt-texts; Mastodon users tend to be very defensive of using alt-texts to extend their 500-character limit by another 1,500 characters per image.
Still, on the other hand, this means that especially Mastodon users want images that they don't understand to come with explanations right away. In particular, neurodivergent people often need explanations, in-depth explanations even. It appears to have gotten to a point where posting an image that needs explanations without explanations is considered just as careless and almost as ableist as posting an image without accurate and sufficiently detailed alt-text.
At the same time, whenever I post an image of any kind, memes included, they're about such obscure topics that they need an explanation. Also, not everyone is always familiar with every meme template, so I have to give an explanation for the meme templates I've used as well. So I always explain whatever might need to be explained.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Ableist #Ableism #AbleismMeta #CWAbleismMeta -
@DopeGhoti @Andrew How many characters would be sufficient for Mastodon to not count as ableist anymore?
If you say, 1,500, who or what says that 1,500 characters are sufficient to describe any and all images, but a lower limit is not?
For comparison, look at my cover photo. The one with the weird building. I have a post with just about the same image in it; here's the link.
In this post, the image has two separate image descriptions. One is in the alt-text. The alt-text is exactly 1,500 characters long, a bit over 1,400 of which are image description. And that's the short description. It doesn't even have room for any text transcripts. It actually isn't much more than an "alibi description". It's only there because many people on Mastodon demand there be a 100% accurate and sufficiently detailed image description in the alt-text of each image in the Fediverse.
Only that "sufficiently detailed" isn't always possible even in 1,500 characters.
That's why there is an additional long description in the post text. It's sufficiently detailed, as in, fully detailed. An image like this requires a fully detailed description. It comes with transcripts of all bits of text within the borders of the image, and it comes with all explanations necessary to understand the image and the description. It's over 60,000 characters long.
Yes, over 60,000 characters in one post. Your character limit is 500. Mine is over 16 million.
Oh, and yes, it's guaranteed to be 100% hand-written. It took me two full days, morning to evening, to research for and write the long description with literally absolutely no help from any AI whatsoever. In fact, I've described details that no AI on the planet will ever be able to see in the image.
So ideally, all Fediverse server platforms should have two image description fields for each profile image, one being the alt-text behind the image, one being a long description next to the image. The latter should not have an arbitrarily-chosen character limit.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Ableist #Ableism #AbleismMeta #CWAbleismMeta