Jupiter Rowland

@@filmfreak75@mastodon.social @@stefan@stefanbohacek.online @@admin@blorbo.social @@developerjustin@mastodon.social 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@stefanbohacek.online @@admin@blorbo.social 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

@@valorzard@mastodon.gamedev.place No dice. First of all, implementing nomadic identity would drastically alter the way how Mastodon works. It would make Mastodon, something that's supposed to be dead-simple, a great deal more complex. I mean, in order to really pull this through all the way (as in Hubzilla/(streams)/Forte-level nomadic identity), your identity, your posts, your followers, your followed, your settings, your filters, your everything, all this must no longer directly reside in your account. It must be containerised in something that Hubzilla calls "channel", and that container would then reside in your account and be able to reside in multiple accounts on multiple independent servers. Next, when Mastodon introduces a new feature, they tend to try to market it as their own original pioneering invention. They can't do that with nomadic identity. There are already enough people who know that nomadic identity was actually pioneered by Hubzilla before Mastodon even existed. Furthermore, before Gargron implements something invented by Mike Macgirvin, hell will freeze over. Even if he tried to sell it as a unique feature of Mastodon, he'd still secretly have to admit that there's something that Mike did right. And quite a few eyes would be on him in hope of Mastodon getting more features from stuff created by Mike. Ever heard of OpenWebAuth magic sign-on? Invented by Mike for Osada and Zap in the late 2010s, then backported to Hubzilla. It was proposed for Mastodon, even if it was only client-side (as in, Mastodon logins would be detected by Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte, but Mastodon wouldn't be able to detect OpenWebAuth logins itself). This went as far as a merge request on GitHub. It could have been built into Mastodon. The code was literally there. The merge request was silently rejected. And that would have been a fairly small change in comparison to the complete rebuild that'd be necessary for a full-blown, Forte-level, server-side implementation of nomadic identity. I mean, @@silverpill@mitra.social had to implement nomadic identity on Mitra client-side. That wouldn't be possible on Mastodon, what with every other Fediverse app being a Mastodon client. Mastodon would require a server-side implementation. Seriously, it'd be easier to strap Mastodon's Web UI to Forte or Hubzilla with the necessary changes to adapt it to a vastly different backend. #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Mastodon #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #Mitra #FEP_ef61 #NomadicIdentity

@@halla@kde.social Since you wanted criticism and advice, here it is. I'll add links to the corresponding pages in my wiki if there are any. (In case you're unaware: Parts of the Fediverse can do embedded links without a URL in plain sight. So if it has a different colour from the rest of the comment here, it's a link even if it isn't a URL.) First of all: Don't start alt-text with "Photo of". Do mention any medium that isn't a digital photograph. But do not say if something is a digital photograph. It's generally considered the default medium on the Web, so mentioning it is redundant and needlessly inflates your alt-text. Next: Don't use line breaks in alt-text. Yes, they make your alt-texts look prettier. But those who rely on alt-text can't see them anyway. Besides, most screen readers expect alt-texts to be only one paragraph. They generally start reading out alt-text with something like, "Graphic." If there are multiple paragraphs, they'll take each paragraph for a separate alt-text and start reading out each one with, "Graphic." Don't use the quotation marks on your keyboard in alt-text. Again, yes, they make your alt-texts look prettier. But, again, those who rely on alt-text can't see them anyway. Besides, these quotes are not generally accepted as standard elements in alt-text. Hence, many frontends don't support them, not even in the Fediverse. Mastodon does. But Hubzilla, for example, which is actually older than Mastodon (and which I'm commenting from right now), doesn't. Hubzilla keeps these quotes in alt-text as their HTML entity: &⁠quot;. So, for example, you have this alt-text: Photo of three books. These are manuals with grey covers, entitled "Owners Manual", "BASIC Users Manual" and "DOS Users Manual" The background is once again my painting table. Hubzilla renders it as: Photo of three books. These are manuals with grey covers, entitled &⁠quot;Owners Manual&⁠quot;, &⁠quot;BASIC Users Manual&⁠quot; and &⁠quot;DOS Users Manual&⁠quot; The background is once again my painting table. Now, let's assume someone blind uses Hubzilla with a screen reader. The screen reader will read your alt-text out loud like this: Photo of three books. These are manuals with grey covers, entitled and quot, Owners Manual and quot, and quot, BASIC Users Manual and quot, and and quot, DOS Users Manual and quot, the background is once again my painting table. And then there are (streams) and Forte. The former is a fork of a fork of three forks of a fork (of a fork?) of Hubzilla by Hubzilla's own creator, the latter is a fork of (streams) by the same guy. These two internally use this very same quotation mark as an alt-text delimiter. This means that once they hit a quotation mark in an alt-text, they assume it marks the end of the alt-text. Hence, they render your above alt-text like this: Photo of three books. These are manuals with grey covers, entitled And they continue right after the end of your alt-text while completely ignoring the rest of your alt-text. While we're at it: If you really want to make sure that screen readers pronounce your acronyms correctly, write them in a way that ensures just that. Let's take "BASIC" as an example. Some screen readers may pronounce it, "basic" because they recognise it as a word. Some screen readers may pronounce it, "bee ay ess eye see" because they spell everything in all caps out. If you want all of them to read it out as a word, don't write it in all caps. In contrast, if you wanted all of them to spell it out, you'd have to insert full stops like so: "B.A.S.I.C." These are two exceptions of the rule that text must always be transcribed 100% verbatim. Don't explain things in alt-text. Explanations must always go into the post text where everyone can access them. Why? Because there are people who cannot access alt-text. Often due to physical disabilities. In order to access alt-text, at least one sufficiently working hand is required. And there are more than enough cases in which people do not have sufficiently working hands at all. Also, GNU/Linux users who run graphical browsers on minimalist window managers such as i3wm that are entirely controlled by keyboard can't access alt-text either. They'd have to move a mouse cursor either to the little "ALT" button or until it hovers above the image. But they don't have mice or other pointing devices. They control their machines entirely by keyboard. But if all these people can't access your alt-text, they can't read your explanations. At all. They're lost to these people. Lastly: Keep your alt-texts and image descriptions strictly neutral. Alt-text is no place for personal opinions. CC: @@alttexthalloffame@mastodon.social #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

@Oblomov I'm on both Hubzilla and (streams), and actually browsing through a whole server of anything is not possible here. The best we have is a directory, somewhat similar to that on Mastodon, but also somewhat more powerful in certain aspects. Even there, Hubzilla only lists channels that can speak its native Zot6 protocol, i.e. Hubzilla and (streams) channels. It doesn't list any ActivityPub actors because ActivityPub is provided by an add-on, optional and off by default. (streams) has ActivityPub support integrated into its core, and its native Nomad protocol is better at working together with non-nomadic ActivityPub things than Zot6, so ActivityPub is on by default. Thus, its directory also lists ActivityPub-based actors. You can filter the directory only in three ways. One shows only local channels. One shows only safe channels, i.e. such that aren't flagged NSFW. And one only shows group actors. This one is interesting because it shows you all kinds of these as far as they're known to your server: Friendica groups, Hubzilla forums, (streams) groups, Forte groups if there were any, Lemmy communities, Mbin magazines, PieFed communities, nodeBB forum categories, Flipboard magazines... That said, filtering by string is not possible so you can't single out actors on a certain server. However, in suggestion mode, the results are weighted by how well their profiles match yours and by how many of your contacts are connected to them, somewhat reminiscent of Facebook. #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams)

@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

I don't want to discuss alt-texts and image descriptions to try and weasel myself out of having to write them.

I want to discuss alt-texts and image descriptions to get them right myself. To improve and optimise them both for all those who need them in some way and for those who enforce them.

I want to know the alt-text activists' quality standards. So I can exceed them.

#AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

@@mvg@ieji.de Einer der Gründe, warum alle meine Bildbeschreibungen und -erklärungen 100% handgeschrieben sind, egal, wie lang und detailliert sie sind. Ein anderer ist, weil das, worüber ich mit Bildern poste, so obskur ist, daß keine KI darüber genug weiß, um die Bilder akkurat beschreiben, geschweige denn erklären zu können. Genau zweimal habe ich mir Bildbeschreibungen von einer KI generieren lassen. Und das war, um aufzuzeigen, wie hoffnungslos untauglich KI ist, um meine Bilder adäquat zu beschreiben, für diejenigen, die der felsenfesten Ansicht sind, KI kann ausnahmslos jedes Bild perfekt beschreiben. #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #LangerPost #CWLangerPost #Bildbeschreibung #Bildbeschreibungen #BildbeschreibungenMeta #CWBildbeschreibungenMeta #KI #KIGegenMensch #MenschGegenKI

@Jourei At least once have I just not posted something because describing the image in any meaningful way would've been quite a task. Though nowadays I'll post it anyway, perhaps I should call in helpers in those cases in the future. I could post lots of pictures that I've made myself, maybe several a week. Instead, I haven't posted any since mid-2024. I, too, refuse to post any image that doesn't have descriptions (two of them for each one of my original images) which are up to my own constantly rising standards. But these standards mean that even a fairly simple image may require several hours to one or two days to describe and explain. In fact, I have been working on the descriptions of a series of avatar portraits for about a year and a half. So far, only the common preamble for four images and the individual long description for one of them are written. Distilling an optimal alt-text from them will be difficult because recent discoveries had me lower my personal alt-text character limit from 1,500 to 512, and I haven't even managed to put one together that doesn't exceed 1,500 characters. And that's for avatar portraits with a neutral white background. Imagine the effort necessary for a landscape or a cityscape or something like that. So much about it being done in 10 seconds. I recall finding a beautifully built, highly detailed harbour scene. It didn't even have anything in it that'd trigger anyone, I guess, so I deemed it safe enough to post. But I found it outright impossible to properly describe within a reasonable amount of time and with a reasonable effort. I ended up choosing a much different scene that still ended up taking me two full days to describe in the long description plus the morning of the third day to write an alt-text. To be honest, I avoid having certain elements in my pictures now, such as vehicles and buildings unless they're very simple. CC: @🅰🅻🅸🅲🅴  (🌈🦄) #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

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

@@hagbard@corteximplant.com @@Mab_813@fedi.at Die meisten Fediverse-Neulinge erwarten aber genau das und wollen auch genau das: ein zweites Twitter. Also buchstäblich Twitter ohne Musk, ansonsten aber haargenau Twitter. Guck dich doch mal um. Wieviele Leute nutzen Mastodon haargenau wie Twitter? Das fängt doch schon damit an, daß sie nie Hashtags benutzen, weil sie die auf Twitter auch nicht brauchten. Und dann wundern sie sich, daß sie keine Reichweite haben. Das liegt auch mit daran, daß die Leute "der Einfachheit halber" auf Mastodon losgelassen werden mit einem Minimum an Erklärungen, wenn überhaupt. Bloß die Leute nicht überfordern. Genau deswegen weiß doch auch kein einziger Mastodon-Neuling, daß das Fediverse eben kein in sich geschlossenes reines Mastodon-Netzwerk ist, sondern daß es da auch noch Sachen gibt, die ganz und gar nicht wie Mastodon sind, die aber trotzdem mit Mastodon verbunden sind und Inhalte nach Mastodon schicken. Und das ist wiederum der Grund, warum die gern und viel beschworene "Fediverse-Kultur" eine reine Mastodon-Kultur ist Aber auch diese Mastodon-Kultur ist den meisten Neulingen fremd. #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #LangerPost #CWLangerPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #NichtNurMastodon #MastodonKultur

@@frankobert@nrw.social Wenn man selbst nur Mastodon nutzt, fühlt es sich piepschnurzegal an. Dann nimmt man eh das ganze Fediverse als nur Mastodon wahr und die Unterschiede zwischen Mastodon und Nicht-Mastodon fast überhaupt nicht. Wenn man selbst aber etwas ganz anderes im Fediverse nutzt als Mastodon, dann ist es immens wichtig. Ich selbst bin nicht auf Mastodon. Ich bin auf Hubzilla (https://hubzilla.org https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubzilla https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/item/0a75de76-eb27-4149-b708-f20b2f79d392) Das funktioniert völlig anders als Mastodon, das hat ein völlig anderes Konzept als Mastodon, das wird von Mastodon völlig unabhängig entwickelt. Es hat Features, die auf Mastodon unvorstellbar sind. Noch dazu ist es zehn Monate älter als Mastodon. Es geht sogar zurück auf Friendica, das mehr als fünfeinhalb Jahre älter ist als Mastodon. Aber wie du mit eigenen Augen sehen kannst, kann ich Mastodon-Tröts nicht nur empfangen, sondern auch von Hubzilla aus kommentieren. Wenn jemand das komplette Fediverse meint, es aber "Mastodon" nennt, dann meint er mich zwar damit, spricht mich aber nicht an. Ich bin ja nicht auf Mastodon. Wenn jemand einen meiner Posts oder Kommentare als "Tröt" bezeichnet in der Annahme, ich sei auch auf Mastodon, dann ist beides sachlich falsch. Wenn jemand sich wünscht, "das Fediverse" möge endlich ein bestimmtes Feature einführen, nur weil Mastodon es nicht hat, dann kann ich mir nur vor den Kopf schlagen. In den allermeisten Fällen hat Hubzilla genau dieses Feature schon zehn Monate länger, als es Mastodon überhaupt gibt. Sehr häufig hat Friendica dieses Feature schon etliche Jahre länger, als es Mastodon überhaupt gibt. Das Fediverse hat dieses Feature also. Mastodon hat es nicht, aber das Fediverse hat es. Wenn jemand dagegen ist, daß "das Fediverse" ein bestimmtes Feature einführt, dem sei gesagt: Höchstwahrscheinlich hat das Fediverse dieses Feature schon. Mastodon nicht, aber das Fediverse. Denn höchstwahrscheinlich hatten Friendica und Hubzilla es schon immer, also auch wieder länger, als es Mastodon überhaupt gibt. Am besten war noch der Widerstand gegen Quote-Posts. "Das Fediverse" sollte die auf gar keinen Fall einführen, sagten einige. Der Witz: Pleroma, Akkoma, Misskey, Calckey, Firefish, CherryPick, Sharkey, Iceshrimp, Catodon, GoToSocial, Mitra, Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams), Forte usw., sie alle haben Quote-Posts. Und zwar schon länger, als es diese Debatte auf Mastodon überhaupt gibt. Und sie alle (außer GoToSocial) können widerstandslos jeden, aber auch wirklich jeden Mastodon-Tröt quote-posten. Oder damals der Widerstand gegen Volltextsuche. Auf gar keinen Fall sollte "das Fediverse" Volltextsuche haben. Nur hatte das Fediverse schon längst Volltextsuche: Friendica war schon im Mai 2010 mit eingebauter Volltextsuche an den Start gegangen. Ach ja: Zeichenlimits. Wer "Mastodon" und "Fediverse" gleichsetzt, für den hat auch das Fediverse ein festgelegtes Limit von 500 Zeichen. Friendica und Hubzilla hatten aber nie wirklich Zeichenlimits. In deren Kultur kommen auch keine Zeichenlimits vor. Aktuell haben sie übrigens ein "Limit" von über 16,7 Millionen Zeichen. Bis auf Threads hat alles im Fediverse ein sehr viel höheres Zeichenlimit als Mastodon. Entsprechend kriegen Nicht-Mastodon-Nutzer ständig auf den Deckel, wenn sie das angeblich von Gargron für das ganze Fediverse festgeschriebene Limit von 500 Zeichen überschreiten. Also: Das Fediverse ist nicht nur Mastodon. Das Fediverse war auch nie nur Mastodon. Das Fediverse ist nicht nur ein Twitter-Klon. Das Fediverse hat sehr viel mehr Features als Mastodon. Und das Fediverse hat auch nicht überall dieselbe Kultur und wird sie auch nie haben. CC: @@Knust@norden.social @@kattascha@chaos.social #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #LangerPost #CWLangerPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteTröt #QuoteTröts #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #Zeichenlimit #Zeichenlimits #ZeichenlimitMeta #CWZeichenlimitMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #NichtNurMastodon #Pleroma #Akkoma #Misskey #Calckey #Firefish #CherryPick #Sharkey #Iceshrimp #Catodon #GoToSocial #Mitra #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #MastodonZentrizität #MastodonNormativität

@@reiver@mastodon.social @@silverpill@mitra.social This is simply because little is written about Forte on the Web. However, I was there when Forte was born back in September, 2024. I was on (streams) back then. Mike Macgirvin had implemented FEP-ef61 in the "nomad" branch of the streams repository a few months ago to test it. When he was confident enough, he merged the "nomad" branch into the regular "dev" branch. In July, 2024, he merged the "dev" branch into the "release" branch, causing the FEP-ef61 implementation to be rolled out to daily-driver (streams) servers. However, it was a maze of Nomad and Zot6 and non-nomadic ActivityPub and FEP-ef61 identities for everything that boiled over. (streams) wouldn't federate with anything anymore, not even with itself. My two still existing (streams) channels, @Jupiter Rowland's (streams) outlet and @Jupiter's Fedi-Memes on (streams), were both affected by this. They were amongst the very first (streams) channels created on an account with FEP-ef61 DID support. Mike would spend half of the summer trying to figure out what had happened and how to fix it. Even while (streams) was still broken, Forte was born in August, 2024 when Mike forked the streams repository and ripped all traces of Nomad and Zot6 support out, probably also in order to get rid of the corresponding IDs and facilitate debugging. This means that FEP-ef61, which had literally caused this whole mayhem and which has to be considered responsible for Forte's very existence, was a) implemented in the streams repository when it was forked into Forte and b) not removed from Forte post-fork. It would not have made any sense to remove FEP-ef61 when one reason why Forte was made at that point in history was in order to debug FEP-ef61. Sidenotes: Mike managed to fix (streams). This whole issue burned him out so much that he officially quit developing Fediverse software, effective September 1st, 2024, midnight. He still carries on working on both (streams) and Forte because nobody else does, what with how many people even use them. #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Streams #(streams) #Forte #FEP_ef61

@@patrickleavy@mastodon.social A whole lot. Sorry, but this will be very very very long again. I don't know if you've read my previous (very long) commentary. But just implementing one or two FEPs won't get you the same full-blown nomadic identity (https://joinfediverse.wiki/Nomadic_identity) that Hubzilla (what I'm writing from right now; https://hubzilla.org https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubzilla https://joinfediverse.wiki/Hubzilla) has had since 2012. And having this level of nomadic identity has to be the goal. What has to be done is: Take something like Mastodon. Non-nomadic. Where your account, your login, equals your identity. Make your identity cloneable Now, before you can make identities nomadic, you have to uncouple them from the login, from the account. Mastodon has to introduce a sort of container for your identity, like the channels that Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte have always had (https://joinfediverse.wiki/Channels_(Hubzilla_&_(streams))) This is necessary so that a future nomadic Mastodon will know what to clone and what not to clone. For example, cloning your password is dangerous nonsense. So, everything that makes up your account except for your login credentials will have to be moved into this container. your short nameyour long nameyour profile images, including alt-textsyour profileyour followersyour followedyour toots, including stats like faves, boosts etc.copies of the conversation trees of all your toots, including stats like faves, boosts etc. as well as attached files for each messageall files you've ever attached to tootsyour settingsyour filtersyour mutesyour blocksyour server blocksetc.Essentially, everything except for your login credentials will have to be moved from directly residing on your account into that box. Change your login Also, your login will have to change from short name + passphrase to e-mail + passphrase. Your short name is part of your identity, it's in the container, it will be cloned, so it can't be used to log you in anymore. In order for this to work, half of Mastodon's server backend will have to be rewritten. Decentralised IDs Next, Mastodon must switch from the Webfinger IDs that it uses now to decentralised IDs as per FEP-ef61. For a while, I guess, it will have to use both next to one another. Then it will have to phase out its Webfinger IDs. The decentralised IDs must be tested against other Fediverse software that already understands them or that's nomadic itself: (streams), Forte, Mitra, Tootik. For example, @@silverpill@mitra.social of Mitra and @Mike Macgirvin of (streams) and Forte must test whether their software correctly understands Mastodon's DIDs. And the Mastodon developers must test whether Mastodon correctly understands the DIDs from Fediverse server applications that already use them. Once it has gotten rid of its Webfinger IDs, the next phase can start. Implement cloning within Mastodon The central element of nomadic identity is not the ability to move your identity. That's only a byproduct of cloning your identity. A clone, in nomadic identity, is a full backup of the container with your identity in it. A real-time, live, bidirectional backup that you can log into and use just like the "original". The clone always has the same idea as the original, regardless of which server it's on. The key elements of clones and cloning must be implemented and tested: cloning an identity container to a different server after registering a new, blank account therecloning an identity container to a different server where you already have an account with a different containerised identityanything that happens on the original being sync'd to the cloneanything that happens on the clone being sync'd to the originalclone going offline, things happening on the original, clone coming back online, things that happened on the original being reliably sync'd to the cloneoriginal going offline, clone still working with the ID based on the original's domainoriginal going offline, things happening on the clone, original coming back online, things that happened on the clone being reliably sync'd to the originalmaking additional clones of an identity container that has already been cloned at least oncethe whole syncing shebang from the original to any number of clonesthe whole syncing shebang from one of the clones to the original and also directly to the other clonesdeclaring one of the clones the new original, thus changing the ID of both the former original and all clones Implement moving within Mastodon Only when cloning works reliably, we can talk about moving, even though that's what everyone on Mastodon is giddy about. Why? Because moving involves cloning. It's an automated process. At least it is on Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte, and it really should be one on nomadic Mastodon. Basically, first you make a clone. Then you declare the clone the new original, and your old original is demoted to a clone. Then you have to wait until your change of ID from changing the original has federated to all your followers and followed and everywhere and whatnot. Then, one last sync so that both the former-clone-now-new-original and the old-original-now-clone are really identical, and you won't lose any data. Then your old-original-now-clone is deleted. We don't want to leave any dead stuff behind, now, do we? Lastly, if your old account where your old original used to reside has no other identity on it, the whole account is deleted. In nomadic containerised identity, accounts cannot/should not exist with no identity container on them. Cloning and moving beyond Mastodon The last possible step is still utter science-fiction: Cloning or moving from Mastodon to something else that's nomadic and understands FEP-ef61. Cloning or moving from Mastodon to Mitra. From Mastodon to Tootik. From Mastodon to (streams). From Mastodon to Forte. Oh, and maybe also back to Mastodon. The difficult part is not only to make Mastodon capable of cloning identity containers to other nomadic software. And to make Mastodon accept identity containers from other nomadic software being cloned to Mastodon. I mean, this would be difficult already. (streams) and Forte are vastly, vastly different from Mastodon. No, the difficult part is to make these four capable of cloning from or to someplace else. As it stands now, you can only clone from Mitra to Mitra, from Tootik to Tootik, from (streams) to (streams), from Forte to Forte. Even cloning between (streams) and Forte has never been possible, even though they're very similar. Oh, and cloning from and to Hubzilla is another story because Hubzilla doesn't have FEP-ef61 implemented. #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #Mitra #Tootik #NomadicIdentity

@@valk@social.treehouse.systems That's a good question. The rule (I understand it as one) says that text must always be transcribed 100% verbatim, i.e. absolutely identical to the original. However, this already collides with the rules that image descriptions must not contain all caps because they tend to irritate screen readers, and that acronyms must be handled in a way that screen readers can deal with in a sensible way. I guess, and I can only guess, that misspellings should be corrected when transcribing text, especially in alt-text. In earlier image descriptions, all of which are long descriptions in the post text, I've transcribed misspellings as well and even added a "(sic!)" after them to point out that it wasn't me who misspelled it. However, doing so amounts to pointing out the misspellings, as would correcting them in the transcript and then explaining which words are misspelled in which way, even though would conform more with the "always transcribe verbatim" rule. Also, I've since declared these descriptions obsolete. Unfortunately, I can't find any online resources about alt-texts and image descriptions that even only take misspellings in to-be-transcribed text into consideration, much less define how to deal with them. It's just like text that's unreadable in the image, but that can be sourced elsewhere: It's commonly treated like it doesn't exist. #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

@Ahimsa @Paul_IPv6 @Izzy I'm occasionally working on my own extensive wiki about alt-texts and image descriptions in the Fediverse. It's still very much a WIP, and not even half of the planned pages are done, and it specialises in the Fediverse (not only Mastodon, by the way). But maybe you'll find something there that's useful for static websites as well. Here you go. If that shouldn't suffice, I've got more than 50 articles, pages etc. about alt-texts and image descriptions linked on this page, including 25 articles by Veronica Lewis a.k.a. Veronica with Four Eyes. #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

@@crossgolf_rebel@moppels.bar Die Regeln sind nicht bei den Diensten anders, sondern generell bei jeder Instanz (unabhängig was darauf für eine Software läuft, das hat damit nichts zu tun). Sowohl als auch. Auf der einen Seite hat natürlich jeder Server seine eigenen Regeln. Auf der anderen Seite ist aber z. B. Friendica oder Hubzilla technologisch und konzeptionell völlig anders als Mastodon. Daher haben die beiden eine völlig andere Kultur als Mastodon. Daher wiederum haben sie auf ihren Servern völlig andere Regeln als Mastodon. Auf vielen Mastodon-Server besteht z. B. Alt-Text-Pflicht. Wenn man nicht alle seine Bilder mit hinreichend guten Alt-Texten versieht, wird man dafür sanktioniert. Auf Hubzilla wird dir das nicht passieren. Allein deshalb schon nicht, weil Hubzilla keine schicken Eingabefelder für Alt-Texte hat, sondern man Alt-Texte händisch in den Einbettungs-Markup-Code für die Bilder "reinprogrammieren" muß. Bis letztes Jahr gab es nicht mal irgendeine Dokumentation, wie das geht. Oder CWs. Auf vielen Mastodon-Servern sind die auch Pflicht. Auf Hubzilla ist Mastodons CW-Feld immer noch ein Zusammenfassungsfeld. Das ist es schon länger, als es Mastodon überhaupt gibt. Und wenn man nicht nur 500 Zeichen hat, sondern über 16,7 Millionen, dann ergibt ein Zusammenfassungsfeld auch einen Sinn. CWs handhabt Hubzilla statt dessen, wie sein Vorfahr Friendica es schon seit 2010 tut: Man kann sich optional einen Textfilter aktivieren, der einem ganz individuell vollautomatisch genau die CWs erzeugt, die man selbst braucht. Zum einen ist man damit nicht davon abhängig, daß alle immer schön brav die richtigen CWs eintragen. Sie müssen nur irgendwo im Post die richtigen Schlüsselwörter haben, was sehr viel wahrscheinlicher ist. Zum anderen bekommt man auch keine CWs aufgezwungen, die man gar nicht braucht, und zwingt anderen auch keine CWs auf, die sie gar nicht brauchen. Das geht auch auf Mastodon, aber erst seit Oktober 2022, und von 𝕏 kennt man das auch nicht, also ist es nie in Mastodons Kultur angekommen. Außerdem gehört das zu den Sachen, die auf Friendica und Hubzilla sehr einfach gehen, wo man sich aber auf Mastodon dabei einen abbricht. Wie übrigens Filter im allgemeinen. Gerade Hubzilla hat es generell nicht so mit Regeln. Auf Mastodon hast du eigentlich nur "stummschalten", "blockieren" und "melden". Hubzilla hat ein sehr mächtiges, feingliedriges Berechtigungssystem und ist darauf ausgelegt, daß man seinen Stream selbst moderiert (und damit, falls vorhanden, den Public Stream gleich mit). Die mächtigen, aber einfach zu handhabenden Filter helfen auch mit. CC: @@frankobert@nrw.social @@dsw28@norden.social @Halbtassentrinker #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #LangerPost #CWLangerPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Friendica #Hubzilla

@silverpill Would be interesting to add Hubzilla's Zot6 and (streams)' Nomad (which would be Zot12 if it wasn't incompatible with Zot6) to the list. By the way: Forte doesn't require a gateway to communicate with non-nomadic ActivityPub. A fully cloned Forte channel can communicate with a Mastodon account without jumping through hoops. Remember that Forte has almost fully-featured Hubzilla-level nomadic identity (i.e. everything except real-time syncing between channel instances; unlike Hubzilla and (streams) which do sync in real time, it needs a cronjob for that) directly built into its core. (streams) does support nomadic identity via ActivityPub. But internally, it uses and relies upon Nomad for its nomadic identity. It only supports nomadic identity via ActivityPub a) because it was used as a development platform for just this and b) in order to be able to understand cloned nomadic ActivityPub actors elsewhere. This is also why it isn't possible to move from (streams) to Forte, to move from Forte to (streams) or to clone between (streams) and Forte. (streams) itself doesn't require gateways to communicate with Mastodon & Co. either. It speaks three protocols natively: its own Nomad, Hubzilla's Zot6 and (optionally, but on by default) standard ActivityPub. #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #ActivityPub #Zot #Zot6 #Nomad #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #NomadicIdentity

@Pino Carafa Home Owners Association. Basically, residents who take "law and order" into their own hands. With extreme prejudice. And more often than not not caring for actual laws while making up their own ones on the fly.

Poll: What's intolerable to you?

When an image post doesn't describe or explain everything you need described or explained, so you have to ask the author for details or explanations or try to look stuff up yourself?

When a post is 10,000, 20,000, 50,000 characters long or more?

Or both?

Pleast boost/retoot/renote/share/repeat for a larger sample size!

#AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #CharacterCount #Poll

So there's that nasty bug on Sharkey that mangles hashtags in messages from Hubzilla and probably also Friendica, (streams) and Forte. They always look like this:

#[Hashtag](https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/search?tag=Hashtag)

Basically, Sharkey receives fully standard Rich Text from Hubzilla. It manages to convert this Rich Text into its own Misskey-Flavored Markdown. But then its Markdown parser does not parse it and leaves the Markdown code visible to everyone. It simply doesn't expect there to be a hashtag character in front of an embedded link because, seriously, who'd ever do that and why?!

Friendica would. In fact, Friendica does. It puts the hashtag character in front of the tag, as in outside the tag, as opposed to at the beginning of the tag. It has been doing that since its beginnings in 2010 because it was designed from the get-go to also federate with StatusNet from 2008. And StatusNet does hashtags the same way on its few remaining servers. In fact, so did Identi.ca from 2008, from which StatusNet emerged.

Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte do it, too, because they have inherited it from Friendica.

On StatusNet, Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte, a hashtag in a message looks like this:

#Hashtag

Notice how the hashtag character has the same colour as the rest of the post text. And not the same colour as the rest of the hashtag. This means that the hashtag character is not part of the link. (To Mastodon users who don't know this: If something in a "toot" has a different colour from the rest of the "toot", it's a link. Even if it doesn't show a URL in plain sight.)

On 𝕏, Mastodon, Pleroma, Akkoma, Misskey, the various Forkeys and a whole lot of other Fediverse software, a hashtag in a message looks like this:

#Hashtag

Notice how now the hashtag character has the same colour as the rest of the hashtag. This means that the hashtag character is part of the link.

But why did Identi.ca do hashtags differently from Twitter? Because Identi.ca did hashtags before Twitter. AFAIK, when Identi.ca was launched, it had support for hashtags right away. About one year before Twitter.

The hashtag itself had already been invented by the Twitter community. Chris Messina had already codified it in 2007. But it wasn't until 2009 that Twitter actually introduced a technological implementation to support it.

Again, Identi.ca must have had hashtags as early as 2008, and there was no way that Identi.ca creator Evan Prodromou could possibly predict what Twitter would do the following year. So he did what he thought was right and what actually made sense to him.

But nowadays, everybody "knows" that Twitter had the world's very first hashtag implementation ever because nobody, even in the Fediverse, has ever heard of Identi.ca. I mean, the majority of Fediverse users "know" that the Fediverse started with Mastodon.

You know, just like Officer James Barrett "knew" that there is no intelligent life outside Earth only a few minutes before he became Agent J of the Men In Black.

This is also why just about all Fediverse software that does hashtags the Twitter way expects everything to do hashtags the Twitter way. It does not expect hashtags to be done differently. And when a message comes in from Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) or Forte with hashtags in it, it fails at varying degrees of ungracefully.

Hashtags with the hashtag character outside the link are older than hashtags with the hashtag character inside that they're not only completely unexpected, that they cause software to malfunction, but the same software often can't even handle that malfunction. It's a miracle that the Friendica/Hubzilla family doesn't cause Fediverse servers to crash or even server databases to go corrupt by simply sending hashtags.

Mastodon used to be an exception of sorts, but only because, before version 4.0 from October, 2022, its HTML "sanitiser" actually ripped out any and all rich text code from incoming messages and left nothing but plain text behind. And then it didn't recognise hashtags in messages from outside Mastodon as hashtags at all.

When Mastodon 4.0 came and supported some rich text, including embedded links, it went haywire, of course. But then someone from Friendica and Hubzilla went in and complained about this malfunction and explained what happened, why it happened and why it was not Friendica and Hubzilla that did things wrong. Besides, if something utterly defaces "toots", then Mastodon developers do step in to stop it. After all, Mastodon has a few more of them at hand, paid, full-time professionals even. You have to give it that.

Which takes us back to Sharkey. Sharkey is developed by a small handful of individuals in their spare time. Granted, it's a soft fork of Misskey, so a lot of development work is done by the Misskey devs and taken over by the Sharkey devs, but they still have to weave the code changes coming from Misskey in and make them work with what's different on Sharkey.

So it turned out that (Link content warning: eye contact) this bug has already been filed to the Sharkey devs in October, 2024. All that has happened since then until today was that Hazelnoot added two labels. But the bug report came with no explanations. In fact, it misattributed one of my Hubzilla posts as a Friendica post.

And in fact, it turned out that this is actually (Link content warning: Microsoft GitHub link, eye contact) a Misskey bug which has been filed in January, 2024, two years ago. The bug report is a bit more elaborate, but the reporter still knew precious little about what's going on. So I wrote a comment in which I explained the bug from a Friendica/Hubzilla POV as well as what's going on on the technical side, and why the error has to be on Misskey's side.

I hope this will finally help get the bug fixed. Unfortunately, this fix would come too late for Iceshrimp. Iceshrimp-JS is a true Forkey, but in maintenance mode, so I guess only security patches and critical bugfixes will be merged from Misskey, if anything. And Iceshrimp.NET is a complete rewrite of a pre-this-fix Misskey fork, so the Iceshrimp devs probably don't know about this issue either. If it fails ungracefully upon receiving hashtags with the hashtag character outside, it will require its own bug report.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Hashtag #Hashtags #HashtagMeta #CWHashtagMeta #Twitter #𝕏 #Fediverse #Mastodon #Pleroma #Akkoma #Misskey #Forkey #Forkeys #Sharkey #Iceshrimp #Iceshrimp-JS #Iceshrimp.NET #Identi.ca #Laconi.ca #StatusNet #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte

@Mastodon Migration Basically telling other people how they should be using Mastodon is not cool unless they are violating some instance rule. As, by the way, is telling Fediverse users who are not on Mastodon to use whatever they use instead like Mastodon users are expected to use Mastodon. Please don't be a Mastodon HOA enforcer. Especially since the alt-text police of the Mastodon HOA have much higher alt-text and image description minimum standards than blind or visually-impaired people. And they seem to be raising their standards further and further. I always try my best to be way ahead of anyone's image description minimum standards, also in order to demonstrate to the Mastodon HOA that I'm not a lazy bum, and that I do try hard to describe my images properly. For my own original images, this means that I have to describe each one of them twice, with a fairly short description in the alt-text and a much longer one in the post itself. This, however, clashes with the Mastodon HOA, too, because they also enforce Mastodon's default 500-character limit Fediverse-wide by generously blocking everyone whom they catch exceeding it at first strike. CC: @🅰🅻🅸🅲🅴  (🌈🦄) #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #AltTextPolice #MastodonHOA

@@Kiloku@burnthis.town @@neatnik@social.lol I've been working on an entire wiki about image descriptions and alt-texts for the Fediverse for quite a while now. It's far from finished, not even half of the over 50 pages planned right now are written. As of now, it'll have 32 rules and guidelines on what to do, how to do it and what not to do. The huge majority of these are completely unknown in the Fediverse otherwise. #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

@@Heidentweet@todon.eu There are actually several alt-text guides on the Web that recommend against mentioning race in image descriptions.

Why?

Because mentioning race, as opposed to mentioning the skin tone, may be perceived as racist. And assuming someone's race is as racist as it ever comes.

Have some sources with links and, for your convenience, excerpts:

https://www.cooperhewitt.org/cooper-hewitt-guidelines-for-image-description/ 4. Ethnicity and skin-tone

When describing the skin tone of a person use non-ethnic terms such as “light-skinned” or “dark-skinned” when clearly visible. Because of its widespread use, we recommend the emoji terms for skin tone as follows: 🏻 Light Skin Tone, 🏼 Medium-Light Skin Tone, 🏽 Medium Skin Tone, 🏾 Medium-Dark Skin Tone, 🏿 Dark Skin Tone. Also, where skin tone is obvious, one can use more specific terms such as black and white, or where known and verified, ethnic identity can be included with the visual information: Asian, African, Latinx/o/a (also see gender), etc.

https://www.sandstormdesign.com/blog/website-accessibility-101-5-best-practices-writing-alt-text-images Descriptions of skin color, not necessarily race or ethnicity. Use descriptions like light-skinned, medium-skinned, medium-light skinned, medium-dark skinned, or dark-skinned.

https://apln.ca/best-practices-for-writing-image-descriptions/ Objectivity and People

Describe what you can see such as physical appearances and actions rather than intentions based on your interpretations. We as humans tend to shy away from discussing ethnicity, race, gender, disability, and age for fear that we would misjudge and use the wrong language but remember that whether you want to or not, you can immediately see these characteristics when you look at a photo. This is information that people with print disabilities should receive, so that all readers have access to the same information and can therefore make their own interpretations.

In order to be objective, we suggest using the following terminology to describe skin tone:

Light Skin ToneMedium-Light Skin ToneMedium Skin ToneMedium-Dark Skin ToneDark Skin Tone This is the same system that is used to label emojis with different skin tones. You can also use terms such as Black, white, South-east Asian, Middle Eastern, etc. but only if this information is also given in the surrounding text.

The same, by the way, goes for gender. A person's gender must never be assumed because that's sexist.

A person's gender may only be mentioned under either of four conditions: The person is identified, and their gender is known from a definitely reliable source.The person is identified, they themselves have publicly declared their gender, and this is known, too.The person is identified, and they declare their gender in the context of your post.The person both gives the appearance of a certain gender and performs that self-same gender in the image. https://www.cooperhewitt.org/cooper-hewitt-guidelines-for-image-description/ 3. Gender

No assumptions should be made about the gender of a person represented. Although, where gender is clearly performed and/or verifiable, it should be described. When unknown, a person should be described using “they, them” and “person” and their physicality expressed through the description of their features, which inadvertently tend to indicate masculine or feminine characteristics. The use of masculine and feminine are problematic and should be avoided unless necessary for describing the performance of gender.

https://www.sandstormdesign.com/blog/website-accessibility-101-5-best-practices-writing-alt-text-images Descriptions of gender presentation instead of assuming someone’s gender. Use descriptions like female-presenting instead of woman, female-presenting child instead of girl, or male-presenting instead of man. There are many different words used for gender expression!

https://apln.ca/best-practices-for-writing-image-descriptions/ Objectivity and People

[...]

You can identify the subject as male or female, man or woman, if it can be clearly identified. Try to describe the physical characteristics and avoid using the terms “masculine” or “feminine” since it is more interpretive than descriptive. There is a delicate balance to strike between inclusive language and robust description; do your best, and ask for opinions from others if you need to.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #AltTextTips #ImageDescriptionTips #FediTips

@@pepper0@aus.social But thanks to Rowland, I've heard about (streams) & forte. Never tried though. I wish (streams) had more public, open-registration servers (also because I need another one to clone to). And that Forte had any in the first place. #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Streams #(streams) #Forte

What if I switched from describing my original images twice...

..."short" (still fairly long) alt-text + fully detailed long description in the post text...

...to describing them three times...

...same as above, but I'd keep these two descriptions to myself, just in case, plus an actually short alt-text (512 characters or fewer for Misskey compatibility or even 200 characters or fewer) that'd be the only description that I'd publish right away?

There would be no excessively long alt-text (at least not right away). There would be no tens of thousands of characters of long description in the post (at least not right away) although I couldn't guarantee that the post won't exceed 500 characters.

At the same time, this would give me "notes" that I could source if someone asked me to describe some detail. And if some Mastodon alt-text activist came and complained that my description is lacking all over, I could replace the short alt-text with the already existing long alt-text and add the long description to the post text right away.

Granted, my workload would increase some more. Most of it might end up for nothing most of the time. And nobody would get text transcripts unless they'd ask for them because I couldn't possibly fit them all into just a few hundred characters.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #A11y #Accessibility

@@scottjenson@social.coop @@stefan@stefanbohacek.online @@lalah@sakurajima.moe 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 @@lalah@sakurajima.moe, "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

@@caohuak@moon.lonewolf.zone @@silverpill@mitra.social Well, to be honest, that crypto stuff doesn't have its bad rep entirely undeservedly. It appears to be used as a cash grab or for get-rick-quick schemes more often than not. The massive gambling with the big cryptocurrencies Bitcoin and Ethereum that causes both to be highly volatile. Gigantic Ethereum mining farms with countless high-end graphics cards that eat up more electricity than a bigger town, often even fossil or nuclear energy because there simply isn't enough renewable energy available where they're located. NFT hypes. Masses of NFTs that were procedurally generated and sold for insane amounts of money. See Bored Apes. They've made a few people very rich with next to zero effort. Others have lost a lot of money because these NFTs are literally absolutely worthless today. And this is a field that I'm pretty familiar with: The Metaverse. Mind you, I'm not talking about Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads. That isn't the Metaverse. I'm not talking about "the Metaverse" a.k.a. "the Meta Metaverse" a.k.a. "the Facebook Metaverse" a.k.a. "Zuckerberg's Metaverse" either which, by the way, is actually named Horizon. No, I'm talking about cryptobros jumping upon the Metaverse bandwagon, hoping to squeeze some money out of it. The blueprint of this all has to be a virtual world named Decentraland which was opened in February, 2020, just in time for the COVID-19 pandemic that caused real-life social interaction to grind to a complete halt and made virtual worlds the more popular. In fact, it was a crypto platform before it became a virtual world. In 2017 already, its own cryptocurrency MANA, which is on the Ethereum blockchain, was first traded to raise money to get the world itself started. And even as a virtual world, it's a crypto platform because Decentraland is pretty much all about minting and selling NFTs. Part of its concept is that deeds to parcels of land are minted as NFTs and then sold. And these parcels aren't even that big. Better yet, they were sold before they even existed as actual virtual land. Basically, Decentraland sold deeds to something that they yet had to make. But they got enough customers to bite, including big fashion brands, but also real-estate companies that scooped up land to sell it with a big profit. Users, especially right-wing extremists, created avatars with slurs for names just to mint them as NFTs and sell them for a fortune. Nothing was done against it. I mean, the more NFTs were sold for MANA, the more MANA was traded, the more volatile it became, the higher profits one could make by trading it. Decentraland advertises itself as "the first decentralised Metaverse". This is nonsense. Yes, it's "decentralised" in the sense that MANA is not running on the Bitcoin blockchain. Yes, it's also "decentralised" in the sense of being governed by a DAO. But the virtual world system itself is a centralised, monolithic silo owned and operated by one and the same entity. The actual "first decentralised Metaverse" is made up of the worlds based on OpenSimulator from as early as 2007. This, by the way, is where I regularly am. It's every bit as decentralised as any Fediverse software out there. As in, you can have an avatar in one world and teleport to another world, on another server, under another domain, owned and operated by other people, appearance, inventory and all. As in, the five developers, including only one actual coder, don't own anything beyond their own patches of land. Another aspect that makes blatantly clear just how Decentraland is a crypto cash grab more than anything else: The actual world itself is buggy as hell. And precious little is done to fix these bugs. In fact, they don't even seem to matter because Decentraland is not about spending time in-world, which is why it's rather deserted and empty, but about minting, selling and buying NFTs. As COVID brought with itself a virtual world boom from which even Second Life could profit, crypto-based virtual world started spreading. For example, The Sandbox had already been bought out, and it came back in March as a crypto-based world. Hundreds of virtual worlds were at least announced in the early 2020s, all copying Decentraland's concept of minting deeds to virtual land as NFTs, backed by nothing more than an announcement and a promise, before even getting started with the actual virtual world. The latter was to be quickly and cheaply cobbled together using some 3-D game engine like Unity or Unreal Engine, neither of which is really fit for virtual worlds in which users can build stuff. The best outcome was an actual virtual world which was barely in a functional state. It only existed for there to be something backing the NFTs. Oftentimes, the financial assets behind the world were kept in cryptocurrencies, hoping that they rise in value which would create more financial assets out of nothing. But when the cryptocurrency crashed, it became impossible to pay for the operation of the world or whatever employees it had. Crypto crashes kept killing crypto-based worlds left and right. It didn't help that most crypto-based virtual worlds used existing cryptocurrencies like Dogecoin. In many other cases, however, there never was an actual virtual world to begin with. They never got it running. So their customers were sitting their with their expensive NFT land deeds and waiting for the actual land to be made. The longer it took for an announced virtual world to materialise, the harder it got to sell more NFT land deeds because the more unlikely it became that the actual land would ever exist. If plummeting land sales didn't put an end to the endeavour, the next crypto crash did. I think there were even scammers among these cryptobros. They, too, announced a hot new crypto-based virtual world. They, too, started selling land deeds as NFTs. But they never had the intention to actually create and launch a virtual world. They sold shit-tons of NFTs for shit-tons of crypto money. Then they waited for the cryptocurrency to soar. If they were smart, they traded it all for millions in fiat money and made away with it to someplace offshore. If they weren't, if they wanted to keep on gambling, they, too, lost almost everything in a crypto crash. Lastly: Around 2021/2022, many cryptobros staunchly insisted in virtual worlds absolutely requiring a blockchain, a cryptocurrency and NFTs for everything. According to them, it's technologically absolutely impossible to build virtual worlds without even only one of these. This was to keep people from getting interested (and invested) in non-crypto virtual worlds. As a matter of fact, however, there are lots of virtual worlds that don't use a blockchain, that don't have a cryptocurrency, that don't have NFTs for anything. Second Life doesn't, and it never has since its launch in 2002. And Second Life still generates more revenue per user and month than Facebook, legally even. OpenSim doesn't anywhere. Sansar didn't. High Fidelity didn't. Vircadia doesn't. Overte doesn't. Roblox doesn't. VRChat doesn't. Rec Room didn't. (Formerly Mozilla) Hubs doesn't. Horizon doesn't. Just to name a few. Some of these don't have any in-world payment system at all. All these blatant lies, the total neglect of the actual virtual worlds and their misuse as a money printer don't really make me trust in crypto. Neither do the rampant gambling and the volatility. Oh, and don't get me started about land prices in Decentraland vs Second Life vs OpenSim. #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #VirtualWorlds #Metaverse #TheMetaverse #Decentraland #TheSandbox #Blockchain #Crypto #Cryptocurrency #Cryptocurrencies #NFT #NFTs #Cryptobros #Cryptomining #CryptoScam #CryptoCrash #NFTCrash

@@ambiguous_yelp@veganism.social Question about describing memes, just to be on the safe side. Let's assume my character limit is not 500, but practically unlimited. Like, tens of thousands of times higher than on Mastodon. Let's also assume I don't have a problem with writing a whole lot of text, for while most of the Fediverse is fumbling around on a phone screen, I'm blind-typing on a hardware keyboard. How would you recommend me to explain meme templates in the post text (in addition to the visual description + text transcripts in the alt-text)? not at all (leaves people clueless)with one link to KnowYourMeme per used template (links are inconvenient, and the linked websites aren't necessarily sufficiently accessible)no links, but a full, in-depth set of KnowYourMeme-level explanations down to the basics (that's 10,000+ extra characters in that one post)same, but chopped into bits of no more than 500 characters (that's a thread of 30, 40, 50, 60 or more short posts) #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

@Mrs. McGibbons 🧚‍♀️ This may be true for real-life cat photos. Just about the most simple images imaginable in the Fediverse. But what if I don't just post real-life cat photos in which I don't have to describe much more than the cat? Because I don't post real-life cat photos. I don't post real-life photos at all unless they're meme templates. My own original images are renderings from 3-D virtual worlds. Very obscure 3-D virtual worlds even. This means: I can't forgo detail descriptions under the assumption that people know what stuff looks like anyway. I can't assume that anyone already knows what anything in my images looks like.Every other time, there's nothing particular in the image that matters more within the context of the post than everything else. Instead, the whole image with everything in it matters all the same.The other half of times, what matters within the context is irrelevant because the existence of 3-D virtual worlds is so intriguing to someone out there that they demand a full, detailed image description. As for the actual alt-texts, I'll try to keep them at 512 characters or fewer, difficult as that will be. But I'll do that for technical reasons: While Misskey and its forks are supposed to truncate longer alt-texts at the 512-character mark, they actually delete them due to a bug. If I make them longer, users on Misskey, Sharkey, Iceshrimp-JS etc. will believe that I haven't written any alt-text in the first place. But I will keep adding long, fully detailed image descriptions to the post text where I have much more room. I need room for sufficiently detailed descriptions, I need room for all the explanations necessary for people to understand the post and the images and the descriptions, and I often need room for all the text transcripts. For example, do you know what the main building on Nebadon Izumi's Universal Campus looks like? Would it be sufficient for you if I just name-dropped it? Or must I describe what it looks like? If so, well, that's 40,000 characters of description only for that building and what's visible inside it because the building mostly has glass panes for walls. 7,800 characters only for the front of a building that's five times as long as it's wide. 500 characters only for that one piece of structure around the main entrance doors. In fact, over 1,600 characters for the doors. Also, 3,200 characters for a teleport panel, including transcripts of 13 bits of text. Been there, done that, got the figures from there. Don't worry, I will always hide long posts behind a summary with content warnings, including a warning about the post being tens of thousands of characters long due to the long image descriptions. In fact, my meme posts will continue to be very long themselves, although not quite as long as posts with original pictures. Describing the visuals is easy most of the time, and it can be done in 512 characters or fewer. But they still need explanations. Otherwise, nobody will understand anything. All my meme posts are about obscure topics, too. Now I'm wondering what's more likely to upset people and make them sanction me in some way, including blocking me without saying a word. Insufficient image descriptions? Insufficient alt-text in particular? Not putting all the text transcripts into the alt-text where many insist that they belong? Or posts behind summaries and CWs that indicate that these posts are 25,000, 40,000, 60,000 characters long? But seriously, even if I cut down visual descriptions to a more normal level, which would come with its own nasty side-effects, I would still need to explain everything. So no, I can't keep image posts at 500 characters or fewer. #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

@silverpill Another case of people who don't know the Fediverse beyond Mastodon. Or, at most, Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube and maybe Threads. Since none of these have groups, these people firmly believe that the Fediverse itself doesn't have any. I have a GitHub account for bug-reporting purposes. Shall I barge in and tell them? #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #FediGroups #FediverseGroups

@@patrickleavy@mastodon.social You don't even have to build it. It already exists in the Fediverse. No need to reinvent the wheel. Hubzilla, (streams) and forte offer you not only full nomadic identity, but also groups. Optionally private groups. That can optionally hide from Fediverse account/channel directories. Optionally with any number of moderators from anywhere on Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte. They have the most advanced permissions systems in the whole Fediverse. They support enclosed threaded one-post-many-comments conversations with thread titles like on Facebook, like on Tumblr, like on any blog out there, like in any forum out there. The character limit on Hubzilla is over 16 million; on (streams) and Forte, it's over 24 million. The number of options in polls is practically unlimited, as is the number of images that can be embedded in messages. And with "embedded," I mean like in a blog post or on a website with text above and below the images. At the same time, they're part of the Fediverse. Hubzilla is based on Zot6/an older version of Nomad; ActivityPub can be activated. (streams) is based on Nomad; ActivityPub is optional, but activated by default. Forte is based on ActivityPub. Any Fediverse software that recognises groups recognises their groups as such. Here is an article with a number of tables in which I've compared the features of Mastodon, Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte: https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/item/0a75de76-eb27-4149-b708-f20b2f79d392 CC: @@silverpill@mitra.social #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #FacebookGroups #Groups #FediGroups #FediverseGroups

@Pino Carafa @ᴮᵉⁿ ᴿᵒʸᶜᵉVOTE IN THE PRIMARIES @🅰🅻🅸🅲🅴  (🌈🦄) It does depend on the image, yes. Most of the images in the Fediverse that aren't just text are real-life photographs. Real life is something that people know, that people are familiar with. For one, it isn't that exciting, and besides, even blind folks have at least got a rough idea about what stuff looks like. When I post memes, my visual descriptions are limited to what's important in the context, and I only write one visual description per image which goes into the alt-text. However, I do add a full explanation in the post text because it appears to me like a sizeable amout of Mastodon users expect explanations for things they don't understand to be delivered to them immediately without them having to ask. But my original images aren't real-life photos. They aren't screencaps from anything familiar either. They're renderings from extremely obscure 3-D virtual worlds. On the one hand, I can't expect anyone to have an idea of what anything in my images looks like. If anyone sighted doubts this, I ask them to check what an avatar in Meta Horizon looks like, what an avatar in Roblox looks like and what a modern avatar in Second Life looks like (Flickr and Primfeed are good sources for the latter). On the other hand, people may be super curious about these worlds beyond what matters in the context of a post, even or especially if they aren't fully sighted. Or the post itself is about the image, as in about the whole image as opposed to something specific in the image. This means that I have to describe the entire image with every detail in it. And I don't describe the image by looking at the image with its limited resolution. I describe it by looking at the real thing, in-world, where the resolution is near-infinite. My sighted audience sees a little white square with six pixels in a row that are ever so slightly less bright. They may not even notice it. I see a sign with two lines of text on it, I describe it all the way to the typeface, and I transcribe the text verbatim. This is how I sometimes end up with over 20 individual bits of text in one image that need to be transcribed. #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

@洪 民憙 (Hong Minhee) :nonbinary: Two people you may consider consulting in this case: @Mike Macgirvin ?️. He invented nomadic identity in 2011. He was the first to implement it in Red (which became Hubzilla in 2015) in 2012. His streams repository, a fork of a fork of three forks of a fork (of a fork?) of Hubzilla, is the place where he laid the foundations of FEP-ef61 out of necessity because he was working on nomadic identity via ActivityPub (Hubzilla and (streams) use their own protocols for that), and it was the first nomadic server software that had it implemented. Also, his Forte, itself a fork of the streams repository, is the only Fediverse server software that uses nothing but ActivityPub to establish nomadic identity and relies on FEP-ef61 to do that. Basically, it's (streams) with no Nomad and Zot6 support, and syncing between clones is triggered by a cronjob because, unlike Zot6 and Nomad, ActivityPub doesn't provide any ways to trigger immediate, near-real-time syncs. Mike hasn't been caught online for quite a while, though, although he's still working on both (streams) and Forte.@silverpill is gradually turning Mitra from a typical non-nomadic, account/login-equals-identity, one-identity-per-account Fediverse software into something that's every bit as nomadic as Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte while casting everything necessary for this process into FEPs. I'm not sure whether this will include containerising identities like the channels on Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte and allowing multiple fully independent identities on the same account, just like the same identity (channel) would be able to exist on independent accounts on different servers. That said, is your goal only to use FEP-ef61 for identities that are tied to their accounts and their servers? Or is your goal fully-fledged nomadic identity on the same level as on Forte? #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #Mitra #NomadicIdentity #FEP_ef61

@@morst@toad.social @@ruemaleficent@kolektiva.social Exactly. How is a screen reader application supposed to know if #superbowl must be pronounced "super bowl" or "superb owl"? #Hashtag #Hashtags #HashtagMeta #CWHashtagMeta #ScreenReader #A11y #Accessibility

@@ambiguous_yelp@veganism.social 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

If there's such a thing as a universal character limit for alt-text in the Fediverse, it's not Mastodon's 1,500 characters.

It's Misskey's 512 characters.

That's also because Misskey has a bug that deletes alt-texts from outside if they're longer than 512 characters. So no matter how much work you've put into your long alt-text, Misskey users will think you haven't written any alt-text.

#FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #Misskey

@@silverpill@mitra.social Probably someone who is very staunchly opposed to blockchains, crypto and NFTs... ...vs earlier Mitra that openly advertised exactly that stuff as its own future. To be honest, I'm not too fond of these three either. #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Mitra

@@calendsofapril@kolektiva.social Line breaks and the quotation marks from your keyboard are both terrible ideas in alt-text. Both are not officially count as elements supported in alt-text, and especially line breaks in alt-text are an invention by complete laypeople on Mastodon. Line breaks are a bad idea because screen readers will consider each paragraph in your alt-text an individual alt-text for an individual image. And screen readers tend to start reading out alt-texts for images with something like, "Graphic." So if your alt-text has three paragraphs, a screen reader will start reading out each one with, "Graphic." Reference #1: Steve Faulkner (@@SteveFaulkner@mastodon.social), Short note on coding alt-text, TPGI, September 15th, 2015; https://www.tpgi.com/short-note-on-coding-alt-text/ Reference #2: Adrian Roselli, Long alt, adrianroselli.com, April 20th, 2024, last update November 8th, 2024; https://adrianroselli.com/2024/04/long-alt.html Double quotes from your keyboard are an even worse idea. That's because they can make certain Fediverse server applications malfunction. I'm not even joking here. First of all, there's Hubzilla, the most feature-rich Fediverse server software of all and one of the most technologically advanced (https://hubzilla.org https://joinfediverse.wiki/Hubzilla) I'm commenting from Hubzilla right now. When there are keyboard double quotes in an alt-text, Hubzilla renders them as their corresponding HTML entities: ". A screen reader will read them out as something like, "And quot," and raise its voice afterwards unless a full stop follows. And then there are (streams) (https://codeberg.org/streams/streams https://joinfediverse.wiki/(streams)) and Forte (https://codeberg.org/fortified/forte) both descendants of Hubzilla, created and still maintained by Hubzilla's original creator. These two use keyboard double quotes as alt-text delimiters internally. So when they encounter the first keyboard double quote in an alt-text, they will assume that this is where the alt-text ends. They will not render the parts of the alt-text starting with that first keyboard double quote. Instead, they will silently discard them. Quotation marks are unnecessary in alt-text anyway. In stark contrast to what everyone on Mastodon believes, alt-text is mostly for screen reader applications. But if you absolutely need quotation marks in alt-text, either use single quotes or typographically correct quotes (“” or »« or «»). One more thing: You've mentioned "supplemental info". I sincerely hope that you aren't talking about explanations for the image itself. Explanations, credits, license information and any other information that is neither present in the message text nor visible to sighted users in the image does not belong into alt-text. Explanations and other extra information must always go into the message text where everyone can access it who can access the message! Why? Because there are people who cannot access alt-texts. I'm still not joking. I've explained this in my WIP wiki about image descriptions and alt-texts in the Fediverse: https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/wiki/jupiter_rowland/How(20)to(20)describe(20)images(20)in(20)the(20)Fediverse/Can(20)everyone(20)access(20)alt-text(3f) Reference: kwbell.eu (@@decembr14@mastodon.scot), 'Alt' text for Mastodon images, April 9th, 2023, last edited June 1st, 2023 Another reference: these actual Mastodon posts which are comments on one of my posts from a few years ago, posted by a user whose hands don't work sufficiently enough to have the physical ability to open an alt-text. RE: https://hachyderm.io/@gnomicutterance/110685869957855464 RE: https://hachyderm.io/@gnomicutterance/110690586917684870 RE: https://hachyderm.io/@gnomicutterance/110690592405651398 RE: https://hachyderm.io/@gnomicutterance/110690603250669254 RE: https://hachyderm.io/@gnomicutterance/110691919197248049 #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #A11y #Accessibility

@Syphist :verifiedtrans: @Askan 🇪🇺 @Alt Text Hall of Fame Unfortunately, those who also explain their images pretty much always make the mistake of doing so in alt-text. Then again, most of them are on Mastodon with a minuscule character limit, so they don't have any room for explanations in their post texts. As for myself, everywhere that I still post images (as rarely as that happens), I'm glad to have eight-digit character limits that I don't have to worry about. I'm glad because what both my memes and my original images show is so obscure and so niche that it requires lots and lots and lots of explanation. On the other hand, if my image posts are described and explained sufficiently enough to not be blocked by Mastodon users, they're way too long to not be blocked by Mastodon users. At least, when I post memes, I link to external explanations whenever I can, especially KnowYourMeme for meme template explanations. Yes, some may find external links inconvenient and prefer explanations right in the post. But seriously, the alternative to one link to KnowYourMeme might be six or seven or more explanations and well over 10,000 characters of text just for the meme template (the used meme templates, the concepts behind the meme templates, the places where these meme templates originated etc.). On top of that would come the explanation(s) of what my implementation of the meme is about. I've been there and done that. #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

Work has been resumed on establishing connections between the Fediverse and the likewise decentralised metaverse, i.e. OpenSimulator. For now, the only feature that's actually implemented is sending OpenSim group messages out via ActivityPub. However, it has been tested against the opposite end of the Fediverse from Mastodon: Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte. https://codeberg.org/fionasweet/OS-AP https://opensimworld.com/post/128355 #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #ActivityPub #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds

@Смерть Окупантам Ein Alt-Text, der garantiert 100% akkurat istgenau das beschreibt, was im Kontext des Post wichtig ist, plus das, was die Leserschaft im Hinblick auf Vorwissen und zu erwartendes Interesse am Thema noch zusätzlich beschrieben haben mußFormen korrekt und auf inklusive Art beschreibtMaße und Positionen korrekt und auf inklusive Art beschreibtFarben korrekt und auf inklusive Art beschreibtPersonen korrekt, angemessen und gemäß dem im zweiten Punkt geforderten Detailgrad beschreibtTexte auf dem Bild 100% exakt Zeichen für Zeichen transkribiertsich aber daran hält, Texte in Großbuchstaben nicht in Großbuchstaben zu transkribierenAbkürzungen in Transkripten auf eine korrekte, inklusive Art und Weise zu handhabensich daran hält, nicht mit "Bild" oder "Foto" anzufangensich daran hält, keine Informationen zu enthalten, die nicht auch auf dem Bild und/oder im Posttext zu finden sindsich daran hält, keine Zeilenumbrüche zu enthaltensich daran hält, keine Anführungszeichen zu enthalten, wie sie auf einer Computertastatur oder der Bildschirmtastatur eines Smartphone zu finden sindsich daran hält, keine Links zu enthaltensich daran hält, keine Hashtags zu enthaltensich daran hält, keine Emoji zu enthaltensich daran hält, keine Fachsprache und keinen Fachjargon zu verwenden oder, falls das absolut unausweichlich sein sollte, die jeweiligen Begriffe zu erklärenplus einer Erklärung des Bildes im Posttext (nein, nicht im Alt-Text) für diejenigen, die das Bild sonst nicht verstehen, kostet wirklich nur, Zitat, ein paar Sekunden Denk- und Schreibzeit Zitat Ende? Ich beschäftige mich schon seit Jahren mit Alt-Texten und Bildbeschreibungen. Ich habe über 50 verschiedene Leitfäden zu dem Thema gelesen; hier ist eine Liste. Während die meisten Fediverse-Nutzer entweder gar keine Alt-Texte schreiben, sie gedankenlos hinschmieren oder sie gleich komplett an eine KI delegieren, bin ich gefühlt der einzige, der kontinuierlich versucht, seine Bildbeschreibungen immer weiter zu verbessern und zu optimieren und sogar Maximalanforderungen zu erfüllen. Ich nehme das Thema also ernst, absolut ernst. Und ich kann aus eigener persönlicher Erfahrung sagen: Eine wirklich gute, regelkonforme Bildbeschreibung, die unter allen Umständen und mit allen Nutzeroberflächen und Apps optimal funktioniert, ist nicht in, Zitat, ein paar Sekunden Denk- und Schreibzeit Zitat Ende, geschrieben. Oder kann es sein, daß das Fediverse und ganz besonders Mastodon, wo ständig auf Alt-Texte gepocht wird, gar keine guten, qualitativ hochwertigen, optimalen Alt-Texte und Bildbeschreibungen haben will? #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #Bildbeschreibung #Bildbeschreibungen #BildbeschreibungenMeta #CWBildbeschreibungenMeta

@@cassolotl@eldritch.cafe 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

@Pino Carafa Well, my problem is not the alt-text. I used to limit my alt-texts to 1,500 characters because Mastodon and its forks truncate longer alt-texts at the 1,500-character mark. In the future, I will limit them to 512 characters because Misskey and its forks should truncate them at that mark if they're longer, but instead, they delete them. But in addition to my alt-texts, I describe my original images once more (= twice altogether). The other description is what I call the "long description", and it goes directly into the post text (as opposed to the alt-text). I don't have a character limit to worry about (over 16.7 million), so I can do what's outright unimaginable from a Mastodon point of view. It's this long description that's causing trouble. That is, I wouldn't wonder if the Mastodon HOA were to sanction me for my alt-text not being detailed enough when I limit it to 512 characters. In fact, I wouldn't wonder if they were to sanction me because a 1,500-character alt-text of mine is lacking important elements (descriptions of certain details, transcripts of all text within the borders of the image etc.). #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #MastodonHOA

@@nocci@punk.cyber77.de Ich bin seit diaspora* immer mal wieder und nun seit einigen Jahren im Fedi, Mastodon, GotoSocial, Sharkey... einiges davon auch selbst gehostet und bereit gestellt. Moment, jetzt bin ich neugierig. [Autovervollständigungsgeräusche] Schätze, dein diaspora*-Zuhause existiert nicht mehr... #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #diaspora*

Um mal die ersten drei Punkte einzeln anzugehen (Achtung @Mastodon-Nutzer, jetzt wird's extrem lang): Leichteres und besseres OnboardingWie sieht denn heutzutage das Onboarding aus: man erfährt von Mastodonman lädt die offizielle Mastodon-App aufs Handyman ignoriert die Server-Voreinstellung mastodon.socialName, Paßwort, los Was soll denn da noch mehr vereinfacht werden? Soll in Zukunft nicht nur das Fediverse (im Sinne des Gerade-eben-nicht-nur-Mastodon-Netzwerks) vor den Nutzern verschleiert werden, sondern auch die Dezentralität von Mastodon selbst? Sollen die Leute zwei Jahre lang glauben, Mastodon (bzw. das Fediverse, wenn sie von dem Begriff lesen) sei nur eine einzelne Website oder gar nur eine einzelne Handy-App? Übrigens, falls das jemand noch nicht mitbekommen hat: Es gibt Nutzer im Fediverse außerhalb von Mastodon, die schon lange dagegen Sturm laufen, daß jedem Neuling das Fediverse als nur Mastodon dargestellt wird, weil das einfacher zu verstehen ist. Daran wiederum stören sich all diejenigen auf Mastodon, die lieber ein reines Mastodon-Fediverse hätten, weil sie zu lange an genau so ein reines Mastodon-Fediverse gewöhnt waren (das es so übrigens nie gab). leichtere und bessere Migration von Accounts zwischen Instanzen (inkl. Portabilität von Accounts)Die Technologie gibt's längst. Und ich rede nicht von Bluesky, das das nie unter Beweis gestellt hat. Ich rede von nomadischer Identität, die schon 2012, fast vier Jahre vor dem Start von Mastodon, erstmals implementiert wurde. Kein grobes Konzept, kein Laborexperiment, sondern seit mehr als einem Jahrzehnt tagtäglich produktiv genutzte Technologie. Der Hubzilla-Kanal, von dem ich hier jetzt gerade kommentiere, ist voll nomadisch. Ich könnte ihn mit allem, aber auch wirklich allem Drum und Dran auf einen anderen Hub verschieben. Ich bin aber noch weiter gegangen: Ich habe ihn geklont. Dieser Kanal existiert gleichzeitig auf zwei unabhängigen Hubs in zwei beinahe komplett identischen Instanzen, die fast in Echtzeit synchron gehalten werden. Sogar beide Male mit derselben Identität, auch wenn der weit überwiegende Teil des Fediverse das nicht wahrnehmen kann. Seit 2024 geht nomadische Identität auf Forte sogar rein über ActivityPub. Was allerdings bis heute nicht gelungen ist, ist, eine typische Fediverse-Serversoftware (nur ActivityPub, nicht nomadisch, Account/Login = Identität) serverseitig voll nomadisch zu machen, also auf demselben Niveau wie auf Hubzilla oder (streams) oder Forte. @@silverpill@mitra.social hatte das mit Mitra vor, hat aber letzten Endes lieber einen Client entwickelt, der das erledigen soll. So wird es bis auf weiteres vier riesige Hürden auf dem Weg zu dem vollnomadischen Fediverse geben, von dem längst schon geträumt worden ist: Existierende, nicht nomadische Fediverse-Software vollnomadisch zu machen, bedeutet einen gigantischen Totalumbau.Das ist so noch nie gemacht worden.Es ist auch bis heute noch nie gelungen, mittels nomadischer Identität über ActivityPub eine Fediverse-Identität von einer Software auf eine andere zu verschieben oder zu klonen. Auch das ist ein rein theoretisches Konzept, von dem keiner weiß, ob und wie gut es funktionieren kann.Selbst wenn das ginge, wird Mastodon sich mit Händen und Füßen dagegen sträuben, eine Technologie einzuführen, die ausgerechnet der Friendica- und Hubzilla-Erfinder Mike Macgirvin erfunden hat. Überhaupt baut Mastodon nur sehr ungern Dinge ein, die sie dann nicht als revolutionär neue komplette Eigenentwicklungen verkaufen können. größere Benutzerfreundlichkeit Und das wiederum kann nur heißen: Die existierenden Fediverse-Serveranwendungen müssen noch mehr wie die populären kommerziellen Silos aussehen und sich auch so bedienen. Das heißt auf die Spitze getrieben: Das ganze Fediverse muß zu einem 1:1-Klon von Twitter werden. Mastodon muß die Oberfläche von Twitter nachbauen. Die offizielle Mastodon-App muß zu einem 1:1-Klon der Twitter-App werden. Und alles, was nicht Mastodon ist, muß "aus dem Fediverse ausgesperrt" werden, weil es Mastodon-Nutzer nur verwirrt. CC für die im Thread, deren Fediverse-Anwendungen keine Konversationen unterstützen: @@z428@social.lol @@samvie@chaos.social @@kjempeslu@climatejustice.social @@m1rk0@social.defcon42.net #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #LangerPost #CWLangerPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #NichtNurMastodon #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #NomadischeIdentität #Onboarding

@Pino Carafa An additional advantage of this would be that I could first ask just how detailed a description they need. Like, if they really want me to spend two full days, morning to evening, to write something that'll take their screen reader three hours to read out loud. The problem, however, is that the virtual worlds that I frequent change a lot. Everything is built by users. A place that I've shown in an image may change mere days or hours after I've been there, so when I go back to take a closer look for a detailed description, it doesn't look like on the image anymore. Or that place may be gone entirely. For example, I could post some images from an in-world event, from places specifically built for this event. Then, two months later, someone asks for a more detailed description. But I can't write a more detailed description because I can't go back to these places, simply because these places were closed and shut down a few days after I had posted the images. Lastly, my impression of Mastodon is still that a significant number of users do not want to ask. Whatever information they may need, they expect it all to come with the post immediately. Having to ask for a detail description or for an explanation appears to be about as bad style as having to ask for a description in the first place. I've literally seen Mastodon toots in which people say that if they don't understand a post or an image in a post, they want an explanation to come with the post. I've also seen a Mastodon toot in which someone said that it isn't sufficient to just say what's in an image, but you also have to describe what it looks like. Right away. And in my case, this is actually absolutely justified. It's a catch-22: If I don't describe my images sufficiently, I risk being sanctioned by the Mastodon HOA for not describing my images sufficiently. But if I do, I risk being sanctioned by the Mastodon HOA for exceeding 500 characters in one post. Oh, and if I chop my image descriptions into tiny chunks of no more than 500 characters, it's disturbing for my own ilk, the users of Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte, who are used to not having any character limits and everything being in one message, no matter how long it is. Besides, how many Mastodon users are willing to read a thread of 120 or more posts and find that more convenient than one post with 60,000 characters? #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #MastodonHOA

@@tylersticka@social.lol @@spaceninja@mastodon.cloud @@neatnik@social.lol I have a problem with this. But I probably only have this problem because whenever I post an image, it's about an extremely obscure niche topic. (Don't go looking for my recent images on this channel; I post my images elsewhere and even there only recently.) When you're describing an image to a friend, first of all, you're describing the image to only one person. You probably already know that person. You can at least estimate what they know about the image you're going to describe. If not, you can ask them what they know, what they don't know, what they need to know, what they want to know. And then you can tailor your description to the individual wants and needs of that one specific person. And you can add the explanations which this person needs and omit the explanations which this person doesn't need. In case they don't understand something, or if they want to know more details, they can interrupt you mid-describing and ask you. But when you're describing an image for the Fediverse, you're describing it for potentionally everyone in the Fediverse (and everyone on the Web, unless you restrict the permission to view your post). You don't know all these people, there's no way you can. You simply can't go around and ask millions of Fediverse users and billions of Web users, one by one, what they know about the topic of your image, what they don't know etc. Neither can you predict who exactly will receive your post and then only go and ask these people in advance. Even if you could, you can't tailor your image description and accompanying explanations to the individual needs of many people. Especially not if you're going to post that image only once for everyone all the same. Worse yet, they can't interrupt you mid-describing and ask you for explanations either. They'll get the entire description plus your explanations all at once. Thus, you have to describe and explain your image for everyone all the same with no regards for individual needs. You have to cover everyone's potential needs right away. Let's take (link CW: eye contact, meme, non-Mastodon Fediverse meta) this image, for example. I've actually used it in a Fediverse meme post. If I were to describe it to one friend, I'd ask the friend if they're familiar with the "One Does Not Simply Walk Into Mordor" meme template, and if they're familiar with FEP-ef61 "Portable Objects". Honestly, I expect hardly anyone to know both. If they aren't familiar with FEP-ef61, and they most likely aren't, I'd ask them if they know nomadic identity, and if they know the streams repository, because knowing both is required for my explanation of FEP-ef61. They probably don't know either, so I'd explain the streams repository to them, including rattling down the whole 16-year history of the software family from Mistpark/Friendica to Forte. When I reach the rewriting of Red in 2012, I'd explain the concept of nomadic identity because it was then when it was first implemented. And even that I could only do if they knew the Fediverse. If not, I'd go start with the Fediverse. If they aren't familiar with "One Does Not Simply Walk Into Mordor", I'd ask them if I could send them a link to the KnowYourMeme page, or if they need it described by me. If the latter, I'd ask them if they're familiar with the concepts of snowclones and image macros. And so forth. Whatever they aren't familiar with, I'd explain it to them. As for the visuals, I'd ask them if they need a visual description of what Boromir looks like, regardless of whether or not this matters in the context. I'd also ask them how familiar they are with The Lord of the Rings and specifically the Peter Jackson films. For this may require even more explanations. How am I supposed to do any of this with an audience of many? Right, I can't. And so I have to deliver all necessary explanations in the message text, right beneath the image itself, just in case someone needs them. And let's face it, most people will need them. The explanation of the image macro itself plus another eight explanations in order for people to understand the main explanation. Over 25,000 characters if they consider links to external explanations bad. #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

@@DavidM_yeg@beige.party @@Dennis@beige.party What more is needed? A full visual description of the settings, the people (of course, avoiding their gender and describing their skin tone rather than their race), their outfits, the surroundings? The title of the film, including an explanation what this film is, who made it, what it is about, when it was released, who the characters are and who the actors are? Regardless of neither of this belonging into the alt-text because information that is neither available in the message text nor plainly visible to sighted users in the image does not belong into the alt-text? Because there are people who cannot access alt-text? https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/wiki/jupiter_rowland/How(20)to(20)describe(20)images(20)in(20)the(20)Fediverse/Don(27)t(20)explain(20)things(20)or(20)give(20)other(20)information(20)only(20)in(20)alt-text(21) https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/wiki/jupiter_rowland/How(20)to(20)describe(20)images(20)in(20)the(20)Fediverse/Can(20)everyone(20)access(20)alt-text(3f) And, pray tell, how is all this supposed to fit in 512 characters or fewer so that Misskey, Calckey, Firefish, Iceshrimp-JS, Sharkey, CherryPick and the other Misskey forks won't discard the alt-text? https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/wiki/jupiter_rowland/How(20)to(20)describe(20)images(20)in(20)the(20)Fediverse/How(20)long(20)can(20)alt-text(20)be(3f) #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Misskey #Forkey #Forkeys #Calckey #Firefish #Iceshrimp #Iceshrimp-JS #Sharkey #CherryPick #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta