#long — Public Fediverse posts

@Scott Jenson @Stefan Bohacek @Rosy This even raises quite a few questions.

When are you "doing it wrong"? What is the point at which you'll stop "doing it wrong"? What are the minimum requirements for, quote @Rosy, "good alt text"?

If you think you have the definite, all-encompassing answer, have you ever talked about it with someone, preferably with an alt-text activist? Because I'm pretty certain that their minimum requirements for "good alt text" and not "doing it wrong" are different from yours. Ask someone else, and their minimum requirements are different yet again.

Still, no matter how they define the minimum for "good alt text" and not "doing it wrong", you'll have to fulfill that to keep your dignity and your reputation, not to mention your reach.

This is why I try to play by all the rules when describing images. This is why I carefully choose between rules that contradict each other. This is why I take such a lot of things into consideration whenever I describe an image.

This, in fact, is why I haven't posted an actually original image in almost two years because the effort is so enormous.

And this is why I'm actually working on a wiki about alt-texts and image descriptions in the Fediverse. It'll have over 50 pages, and it uses more than 50 references all over the Web already now.

Now, what if I told you that you can even be lectured or sanctioned or insulted or blocked outright for not having good enough alt-text behind an image that you've posted several years ago? And that my images aren't auto-purged after a certain time?

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

@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

@Sam 🐛 @Robert Kingett It'd be a lot easier if the fully sighted alt-text enforcers on Mastodon had the same standards for good image descriptions as the blind or visually-impaired users. And their standards usually aren't tremendously high.

But they go by their own standards. They don't even all have the same standards because they don't talk to each other. At least some of them keep raising their standards. One of their sources for what makes good image descriptions is, no, not the W3C, but Mastodon itself. Mastodon where alt-texts of well over 1,000 characters are cheered for. And you never know who of them discovers which of the many alt-text guides out there as their new reference.

Worse yet: They don't just sanction "sub-standard" new image descriptions. They may just as well sanction "sub-standard" image descriptions in posts that are several years old already.

At the end of the day, the only way for us to survive is by taking all these guides into consideration, try hard to comply with them all and overcomply with these people's standards so that our image descriptions are still good enough in four, five or more years. Where I am, images aren't generally automatically purged after a year or a few, neither are posts, so a many-years-old post with an image description that's less than optimal by today's standards, whatever these may be, may always come back to bite you.

The alternative would be to go around and update all your image descriptions whenever you find that someone has some minimum quality requirements that your image descriptions don't fulfill. And that's tedious and may send your edited posts around anew even if they themselves are outdated by topic.

As someone who posts images, you have the choice. Either you go to extremes, and you make sure that your image descriptions are good enough by anyone's standards and will be for as long as they remain available in the Fediverse. Or you end up being attacked, insulted, ostracised and blocked for not having tried hard enough.

And seriously, those who regularly lecture people who post images about the importance of alt-texts or even attack anyone who doesn't supply good enough alt-texts, I've never seen any of them do the same when someone has written a too long alt-text or a too detailed image description. Not even once.

Yes, extremely long image descriptions are rather inconvenient for those who actually need them due to disabilities. But it isn't their wrath that you have to fear. And if I knew how to fully cater to everyone's needs all the same, you can believe me I'd tell you how, not to mention try my hardest to do just that myself. It's just that that's impossible.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

@Sam 🐛 @Robert Kingett It'd be a lot easier if the fully sighted alt-text enforcers on Mastodon had the same standards for good image descriptions as the blind or visually-impaired users. And their standards usually aren't tremendously high.

But they go by their own standards. They don't even all have the same standards because they don't talk to each other. At least some of them keep raising their standards. One of their sources for what makes good image descriptions is, no, not the W3C, but Mastodon itself. Mastodon where alt-texts of well over 1,000 characters are cheered for. And you never know who of them discovers which of the many alt-text guides out there as their new reference.

Worse yet: They don't just sanction "sub-standard" new image descriptions. They may just as well sanction "sub-standard" image descriptions in posts that are several years old already.

At the end of the day, the only way for us to survive is by taking all these guides into consideration, try hard to comply with them all and overcomply with these people's standards so that our image descriptions are still good enough in four, five or more years. Where I am, images aren't generally automatically purged after a year or a few, neither are posts, so a many-years-old post with an image description that's less than optimal by today's standards, whatever these may be, may always come back to bite you.

The alternative would be to go around and update all your image descriptions whenever you find that someone has some minimum quality requirements that your image descriptions don't fulfill. And that's tedious and may send your edited posts around anew even if they themselves are outdated by topic.

As someone who posts images, you have the choice. Either you go to extremes, and you make sure that your image descriptions are good enough by anyone's standards and will be for as long as they remain available in the Fediverse. Or you end up being attacked, insulted, ostracised and blocked for not having tried hard enough.

And seriously, those who regularly lecture people who post images about the importance of alt-texts or even attack anyone who doesn't supply good enough alt-texts, I've never seen any of them do the same when someone has written a too long alt-text or a too detailed image description. Not even once.

Yes, extremely long image descriptions are rather inconvenient for those who actually need them due to disabilities. But it isn't their wrath that you have to fear. And if I knew how to fully cater to everyone's needs all the same, you can believe me I'd tell you how, not to mention try my hardest to do just that myself. It's just that that's impossible.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

@Sam 🐛 @Robert Kingett It'd be a lot easier if the fully sighted alt-text enforcers on Mastodon had the same standards for good image descriptions as the blind or visually-impaired users. And their standards usually aren't tremendously high.

But they go by their own standards. They don't even all have the same standards because they don't talk to each other. At least some of them keep raising their standards. One of their sources for what makes good image descriptions is, no, not the W3C, but Mastodon itself. Mastodon where alt-texts of well over 1,000 characters are cheered for. And you never know who of them discovers which of the many alt-text guides out there as their new reference.

Worse yet: They don't just sanction "sub-standard" new image descriptions. They may just as well sanction "sub-standard" image descriptions in posts that are several years old already.

At the end of the day, the only way for us to survive is by taking all these guides into consideration, try hard to comply with them all and overcomply with these people's standards so that our image descriptions are still good enough in four, five or more years. Where I am, images aren't generally automatically purged after a year or a few, neither are posts, so a many-years-old post with an image description that's less than optimal by today's standards, whatever these may be, may always come back to bite you.

The alternative would be to go around and update all your image descriptions whenever you find that someone has some minimum quality requirements that your image descriptions don't fulfill. And that's tedious and may send your edited posts around anew even if they themselves are outdated by topic.

As someone who posts images, you have the choice. Either you go to extremes, and you make sure that your image descriptions are good enough by anyone's standards and will be for as long as they remain available in the Fediverse. Or you end up being attacked, insulted, ostracised and blocked for not having tried hard enough.

And seriously, those who regularly lecture people who post images about the importance of alt-texts or even attack anyone who doesn't supply good enough alt-texts, I've never seen any of them do the same when someone has written a too long alt-text or a too detailed image description. Not even once.

Yes, extremely long image descriptions are rather inconvenient for those who actually need them due to disabilities. But it isn't their wrath that you have to fear. And if I knew how to fully cater to everyone's needs all the same, you can believe me I'd tell you how, not to mention try my hardest to do just that myself. It's just that that's impossible.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

@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