Lmst

#LongPost Last weekend, I spent some time figuring out how I could control one of my storage heaters via Bluetooth and #HomeAssistant. It was relatively straightforward, adjusting settings, seeing what changes happened using BLE Scanner, and then using ESP32-BLE2MQTT to handle the integration. Sorted.

I'd also noticed that the OEM app synced the heater's clock whenever it connected. "Great!", I thought, and set up an automation to do that automatically each night at midnight. Everything looked great.

Except it wasn't. During the week I'd noticed the room getting colder and colder and that the heater wasn't taking a charge. Yesterday, looking through the heater diagnostics, I saw it hadn't recorded any usage data for the week, so updating the clock at midnight was preventing it from charging. Changed that automation and - hurrah - last night gave us heat! Creda storage heater + Home Assistant = win!

@Darth Hideout 🏳️‍🌈

- #Mastodon needs to invest in alleviating this burden. It’s already a pain for shorter things.

What is Mastodon supposed to do? Lift the 1,500-character limit for alt-texts?

There's a good reason why just about every alt-text guide out there...

https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/wiki/jupiter_rowland/How(20)to(20)describe(20)images(20)in(20)the(20)Fediverse/Other(20)resources(20)on(20)image(20)descriptions(20)and(20)alt-text

...tells everyone to keep alt-texts short.

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)

Besides, I myself am not even on Mastodon. I'm on Hubzilla which was developed years before Mastodon, wholly independently from Mastodon and for different purposes than Mastodon.

https://hubzilla.org
https://joinfediverse.wiki/Hubzilla

- As far as I’m concerned the purpose of this field is to be a caption. There’s absolutely zero reason to try to reproduce the entire contents of an image.

I beg to differ. Here's an article that I've written a while ago:

https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/item/95b6e36d-7fcd-4791-8cc1-c93e8b9975a3

- This is exactly the alt field from an HTML img tag. Never host images without that field.

I know what it is.

Here on Hubzilla, we don't put alt-text into a separate text field. We put it into image-embedding markup code like in a forum post or a blog post. BBcode instead of HTML, but still.

- I’m not important. Neither is anything I say. Who cares if I boost you or don’t? If you do care for any reason, put something in that field to make the decision easier for me.
- Others disagree with me on these points. I may boost you anyway. They may do something else.

It may be only you who thinks like that.

It may just as well be legions of Mastodon users who will block anyone upon first strike when they catch them not transcribing text in an image in alt-text, regardless of there being transcripts in the post itself.

I'm trying to satisfy as many and as many different people as possible. And that's horribly difficult for me as a) I'm on something that's very, very much not Mastodon, and b) I post images like next to no-one else. But I'd risk even more reach within the Fediverse than I already do.

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

@Christopher Lovejoy @Alt Text Hall of Fame Something that practically nobody on Mastodon (or anywhere else in the Fediverse) knows:

Explanations do not belong into the alt-text. There must never be exclusive information only in the alt-text. Explanations and other extra information must always go into the post 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)

Why?

Because not everyone can access alt-text.

#^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)

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta

@Darth Hideout 🏳️‍🌈 @RememberUsAlways So this means that if I have an extremely long and fully detailed image description in the post (my character limit is not 500, but over 16.7 million), and that image description contains verbatim transcripts of all text that's anywhere within the borders of the image (been there done that)...

...I still have to provide another image description in the alt-text that's still sufficiently detailed and accurate, and that contains all the same verbatim transcripts of all the same texts?

Now, I'm not talking about Twitter or Bluesky or Mastodon screenshots. I'm talking about renderings from within 3-D virtual worlds. They may have a whole lot of text in them even if it isn't always large enough to be readable.

For example, take this image from the same Fediverse channel that I'm replying to you right now:

#^https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/photos/jupiter_rowland/image/b1e7bf9c-07d8-45b6-90bb-f43e27199295

I've posted it in this Fediverse post (as in the post did end up in a lot of Mastodon timelines):

#^https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/item/f8ac991d-b64b-4290-be69-28feb51ba2a7

I have described the image twice. In the post itself, there is a long description of 60,000+ characters, including all necessary explanations to understand the image and the description, and including transcripts of all texts:

"Patefacio radix" (+ explanation that it is Latin for "open source")
MMXI (+ explanation that it is the Roman number 2011 and, in the long description, what it stands for)
"Universal"
"Campus"
various room numbers
the numbers 1 to 10 on circular markers on a map
"This is currrent (sic) location"
"1: Main Landing Zone"
"2: Main Building Lobby"
"3: Main Conference Hall"
"4: Recreation and Conference Center"
"5: Observation Deck and Sea Lab"
"6: Science Lab and Conference Room"
"7: Campfire and Beach Zone"
"8: The Light House"
"9: Engineering Conference Center"
"10: Helicopter Landing Pad"
"click to select location then right click and teleport!"
"Teleport"
"AVATARS"
the capital letter "C"
"To download a free copy of the Universal Campus Var Region."
"Click here for notecard"

In the alt-text which is exactly 1,500 characters long, there is a short image description of a bit over 1,400 characters which does not contain any text transcripts. That's because it doesn't have enough room for all these transcripts plus visual descriptions of where each one of all these bits of text is.

If it's a hard requirement to add all these text transcripts into the alt-text and, of course, describe where they are (because they'd be useless otherwise), then I can no longer post any images with text anywhere in them. And I probably have to delete all my image posts that do contain text and hope that they will be deleted from everywhere on Mastodon and Pixelfed as well.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Transcript #Transcripts

@tofeo :verified: @julian ...where "always" means "since before there was even Mastodon".

A side-effect of their model, present at least on Hubzilla and Hubzilla's descendants, including still existing (streams) and Forte, is that comments/replies cannot exist in a stream without a) a parent and b) a start post. On all of them, including Friendica, it isn't a post if it replies to something, very much unlike Mastodon where a thread is a bunch of posts.

Depending on whom you ask, a conversation looks either like this:

Post
- Comment
  - Comment
    - Comment
- Comment
  - Comment
    - Comment

or like this:

Post
- Comment
  - Reply
    - Reply
- Comment
  - Reply
    - Reply

And by default, you always see it like this, very much unlike Mastodon where you only see single-message piecemeal in any timeline, and you have to dig deep to see a whole thread.

If you delete a comment or a reply, this won't just remove the comment from the conversation and rip a hole into the branch in the conversation where the comment used to be. Instead, it will delete the comment, all comments on it, all comments on these comments and so far from the conversation because all these comments on comments no longer have a parent, and therefore, they no longer have anywhere to attach in the conversation.

If you delete the post, you delete the whole conversation. The comments on the post will no longer have a parent, and nothing in the conversation will have a post to refer to anymore.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Mastodon #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #Conversationa

@The Nexus of Privacy Unfortunately, I can't join that discussion for some reason.

Just so much, @Emelia 👸🏻: Most of my Fediverse data and identities are anything but locked to any instance. All my Hubzilla and (streams) channels are nomadic and cloned across two fully independent servers each. I could make more clones, I could declare any clone the new main instance, and no matter which server goes offline, my channels will carry on.

Each of these servers corresponds not to an ATmosphere PDS and not to a full ATmosphere PDS/relay/AppView stack either, but to a Mastodon server, only that these servers use something else than ActivityPub as their primary protocol and ActivityPub only as an optional extra protocol. However, with the creation of Forte in August, 2024, this technology was first implemented entirely with ActivityPub.

This technology is neither new nor experimental; in fact, it has been around for longer than Mastodon, much less Bluesky: It was conceived in 2011 and first implemented on a precursor of Hubzilla in mid-2012.

CC: @Martin Holland @Rob Ricci

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #PortableIdentity #NomadicIdentity

@Mark Wyner Won’t Comply :vm: @Dgar That's why I'm working on an entire wiki on how to describe images and write proper alt-texts in the Fediverse. Right now, it's planned to have over 40 pages, even though not even half of them are written yet. The topic is actually that complex, and there's so much that nobody on Mastodon knows when it comes to alt-text.

Besides, there isn't any image description guide otherwise that takes the non-Mastodon Fediverse in account. I'm going to cover that as well, although I won't add step-by-step guides on how to add an alt-text with this Web frontend or that mobile app. But I'm going to take into consideration that the non-Mastodon Fediverse is never limited to only 500 characters.

In case you're curious: Here is the link.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Wiki

So the only way would be to split every 499 #characters ..
Automatically..

Oh #mastodon why are you so annoying.
https://ibb.co/sJswpwB7
https://i.ibb.co/vvLPCPt9/joined-image.jpg

#WTFFedi
#repost •acws #acws #longpost

@Ben Pate 🤘🏻 Well, I'm used to having not only full native data portability, but even live, hot, bidirectional, real-time updates of entire Fediverse identities that contain stuff which 99% of the Fediverse doesn't support. Natively without an external application. Available for longer than Mastodon itself. Between any number of independent servers. So I'm not easily impressed.

I would be kind of impressed if LOLA managed to move a Mastodon account into a brand-new, virgin Hubzilla channel

automatically activating all necessary apps from PubCrawl to Privacy Groups to Superblock to NSFW if the Mastodon account has at least one hiding filter
activating all features that are either hard-coded or switched on on the Mastodon source account, but off by default on new Hubzilla channels
(optionally) setting the channel role to Custom and configuring it in such a way that Hubzilla behaves as closely to Mastodon as possible, permissions-wise
translating all followers and followed into Hubzilla's system of Facebook-style mutual-by-default contacts
reconnecting all followers and followed on their end
translating each Mastodon list into a Hubzilla privacy group, all members included while keeping the default "Friends" privacy group and adding all contacts to it
converting followed hashtags into FediBuzz contacts (Hubzilla cannot follow hashtags, but we want the Hubzilla destination channel to be as close to the Mastodon source account as possible)
translating not only the entire timeline of the Mastodon source account into a Hubzilla stream, but also importing entire threads behind and around each post in the timeline (this is absolutely necessary for the Mastodon user to keep their replies to other people's posts because a Hubzilla comment cannot exist without the start post and the entire branch of the conversation that led to it; also, it's a Hubzilla killer feature over Mastodon that you always see entire conversations instead of single-message piecemeal)
transferring all posts, replies and DMs with all media in them
converting Mastodon's loosely-tied threads, no matter who has started them, into Hubzilla-style enclosed conversations as per FEP-171b Conversation Containers with unified permissions for all messages within a conversation
translating mentions and links into Hubzilla-specific markup
translating faves into thumbs up
translating Mastodon 4.6-style quotes into Hubzilla-style shares, automatically recognising which Hubzilla version the destination channel is running on and deciding which Hubzilla share format to use
translating CWs in comments into [summary][/summary] tags (this would require Hubzilla to actually fully support summaries in comments which it currently doesn't because that doesn't make sense from a Facebook/blogging POV)
translating Mastodon's post visibility settings into Hubzilla's permission system as far as that's possible (only for start posts, that is, because comments always inherit their permissions from the start post; also, this will have to be done after taking care of all contacts because "followers only" Mastodon toots will have to be converted into non-public posts which grant permission to see them only to the "Friends" privacy group, and likewise, DMs will have to have the contact(s) to whom they were originally sent assigned as those who are permitted to see them)
importing all images, videos and other attached files into the Hubzilla channel's file space, including appropriate permission settings and, ideally, sorting them into Hubzilla-style "year-month" folders
converting all media attachments into embedded links to the locations of the respective media files in the file space, including adding alt-texts to the embedding code
importing the block list on the Mastodon source account into Superblock (that is, Hubzilla cannot block entire servers, but maybe this could automatically be translated into filter lines)
converting blocking filters into channel-wide filter lines, converting bare keywords into regular expressions if the whole word option is set for these keywords on Mastodon
adding the keywords of hiding filters to NSFW, converting bare keywords into regular expressions if the whole word option is set for these keywords on Mastodon
translating the selected languages on the Mastodon source account into channel-wide filters on Hubzilla (even though this probably won't work exactly identical because Hubzilla neither sets nor knows per-message language settings)
recognising the contents of Mastodon's free-text profile fields and moving them into the appropriate ones of Hubzilla's several dozen purpose-bound profile fields
populating Hubzilla's keyword field with all hashtags found in the profile text of the Mastodon source account
setting your channel language according to the language that most of your posts are in
bonus points for entering Mastodon's colours into the Redbasic colour settings and changing the PDL layout settings so that the look of the Hubzilla destination channel is closer to that of the Mastodon source account than by default

Even that wouldn't give you a 100% identical copy of your Mastodon account. Hubzilla doesn't support quote-post control; the only way to make your posts non-quote-postable is by making them non-public (something that Mastodon can only understand as a DM), and you have no control whatsoever over the permissions of your comments on other people's posts anyway. Also, as I've already mentioned, Hubzilla currently doesn't support summaries (= Mastodon CWs) in comments.

However, vice versa, it'd be even harder to shoehorn Hubzilla's wealth of features into a new Mastodon account.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Mastodon #Hubzilla #NomadicIdentity #LOLA

@Prof. Rachel Thorn 🍉🇺🇦🏳️‍⚧️🏳️ I'm working on my own guide. It's specifically for the Fediverse, and it's the only such guide that is not only for Mastodon.

While it won't include step-by-step instructions on how to add alt-text on this or that server application's Web frontend or in this or that app (I simply can't know/test them all, and that'd be well over 100 individual guides), it will take particular properties of non-Mastodon Fediverse applications into account, specifically the much higher number of available characters outside Mastodon.

Also, it takes many other guides into account as references to show that I haven't made everything up.

However, it isn't just one page. It's a whole wiki because the topic really is that complex, and because there is so much about image descriptions and alt-text that nobody knows about. Currently, 20 pages are written, and another 24 are planned, but both numbers may increase. And since this is a wiki, existing pages may always change.

Another advantage of having a wiki instead of one page is that I can easily point people at certain aspects of describing images or writing alt-text, e.g. when they use alt-text to write around their 500-character limit, or when they add line breaks or the quotation marks from their keyboard to alt-text, or when they want to know whether and how to describe colours.

The wiki is part of the same Hubzilla channel that I'm commenting from right now:

https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/wiki/jupiter_rowland/How(20)to(20)describe(20)images(20)in(20)the(20)Fediverse/Home

By the way, the wiki also contains a list of over 50 alt-text guides:

https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/wiki/jupiter_rowland/How(20)to(20)describe(20)images(20)in(20)the(20)Fediverse/Other(20)resources(20)on(20)image(20)descriptions(20)and(20)alt-text

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

Jupiter Rowland schrieb den folgenden Beitrag Sun, 21 Sep 2025 21:42:56 +0200 How broken-by-design are Mastodon's quote-posts? This broken.
The various issues with quote-posts on Mastodon that nobody on Mastodon is aware of; CW: long (almost 6,800 characters), Fediverse meta, Fediverse-beyond-Mastodon meta, Mastodon looking bad in comparison with the rest of the Fediverse, quote-post meta
Okay, everyone, sit down. I'll tell you a few things about Mastodon's quote-post feature that you know nothing about. Definitely not if all you know is Mastodon. Oh, and by the way, in case you don't know yet in spite of following me: The Fediverse is not only Mastodon.

Mastodon has been quote-post-able for as long as it has been around

Eugen Rochko is bringing quote-posts to Mastodon. But he is not bringing quote-posts to the Fediverse. The Fediverse has had quote-posts for 15 years.

It was Mike Macgirvin who introduced quote-posts to the Fediverse in July, 2010, when he launched something called Mistpark back then and Friendica today (https://friendi.ca, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendica). That was five and a half years before Mastodon was launched.

In fact, when Mastodon was launched, it immediately federated itself with Friendica and with Hubzilla, a fork of a fork of Friendica by Friendica's own creator which has quote-posts, too. So when Mastodon was launched, it immediately became possible to quote-post Mastodon toots. Not on Mastodon itself, but on Friendica and Hubzilla.

Just about everything that isn't Mastodon has already got quote-posts right now

Here are a few (but not even all) Fediverse server applications that already have quote-posts:

And they're all part of the Fediverse which means that they're all connected to Mastodon. People on all of these can theoretically read your Mastodon toots. And people on all of these can theoretically quote-post your Mastodon toots.

Mastodon's quote-post opt-in is not a water-tight defence against being quote-posted

So you can choose not to be quote-posted. But you can only choose not to be quote-posted by Mastodon users. This opt-in does not work with the rest of the Fediverse.

First of all, that's because Mastodon's quote-post feature is not compatible with anything else out there. Mastodon's developers have chosen to re-invent the quote-posting wheel from scratch. They've intentionally chosen to do so in a way that's completely incompatible with everything else out there.

Their intention was to reinforce Mastodon's appearance to its own users as the one and only Fediverse and ActivityPub gold standard and to make Pleroma, Akkoma, Misskey, Firefish, Iceshrimp, Sharkey, CherryPick, Catodon, Mitra, Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams), Forte etc. look broken. It's part of their plan to keep Mastodon users on Mastodon in the wake of Mastodon's market share in the Fediverse shrinking.

Also, they did not publish any specifications on their quote-post implementation, so even those non-Mastodon developers who are fast enough didn't have a chance to implement support for Mastodon's opt-in.

This means that even if you've set your posts to un-quote-post-able on Mastodon, everything I've listed above can still quote-post you with no resistance.

Absolute Fediverse-wide protection against being quote-posted is impossible

And don't get your hopes high that the day will come when nobody on the Fediverse will be able to quote-post you, whether they're on Mastodon or not. Such a setting is technologically impossible.

Who says that? Mike Macgirvin says that. The guy who launched Friendica and brought quote-posts to the Fediverse 15 years ago, remember? This guy has built the Fediverse's most elaborate, most complex, most fine-grained, most advanced permissions system into (streams) and Forte.

These two have reply control, the kind of which you couldn't image in your wildest dreams. I'm serious. They have permissions settings for almost everything on two or three levels, for your whole channel, individually per contact and sometimes even per post or per file or folder in the file storage.

But they don't have quote-post permission settings. Because that's impossible to enforce Fediverse-wide. And even if it was possible, it'd be pointless. If they can't quote-post you, they'll copy-paste you. If they can't copy-paste you either because they're on a phone, they'll post screenshots of your toots.

Mike also says, there is exactly one way to keep people from quote-posting you, and that's by not posting in public. Unfortunately, unlike what he has created, Mastodon has little between "public" and "DM", if anything.

Mastodon cannot quote-post the non-Mastodon Fediverse

This may be the big surprise: It has recently been discovered by chance that Mastodon's quote-post feature only works with Mastodon toots.

On the one hand, Pleroma, Akkoma, Misskey, Sharkey, Friendica, Hubzilla etc. can quote-post just about everything that comes in from Mastodon. But on the other hand, no Mastodon 4.5 user will be able to quote-post anything from either of these. Or from Pixelfed or PeerTube or Loops or Castopod or WriteFreely or whatever.

That's because Mastodon is looking for a quote-post opt-in. But nothing else in the Fediverse supports Mastodon's quote-post opt-in, also seeing as it's still officially in development. And it's highly unlikely that everything in the Fediverse will adopt another piece of non-standard, proprietary Mastodon tech.

"Quote" actually means something else

Lastly, Mastodon has the audacity to call this feature "quote".

A "quote" is something else. Remember forums? Like, bulletin-board forums with subforums and all? Where posts are quoted in follow-ups, entirely or only partially? That's what a quote is. That has got nothing to do with quote-posts.

Why I say that there's a difference? Because I also say that Friendica has had both quotes and quote-posts.

It has had them for 15 years, both quotes (which it calls "quotes", go figure) and quote-posts (which it calls "quoted shares", and which include the original author of the quoted post, complete with their profile picture and a clickable link to them, as well as a clickable link to the original post).

Hubzilla has both. (streams) has both. Forte has both. And I wouldn't be surprised if other Fediverse server software had both, too.

The irony is that Mastodon itself has been able to render actual quotes since version 4.0 from October, 2022. At the same time, it will continue to be unable to render any quote-posts done outside of Mastodon for the foreseeable future.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #Pleroma #Akkoma #Misskey #Forkey #Forkeys #Firefish #Iceshrimp #Sharkey #CherryPick #Catodon #Mitra #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares

#mastodon #fediverse #activitypub #hubzilla #friendica #forte #streams

@Wayne

I think more rather than less is always better.

Do you have an upper limit on "more"?

What if I went and took two full days to describe one image in

1,400+ characters of "short" description in the alt-text
an additional 60,000+ characters of long description in the post text, including explanations and dozens of individual text transcripts?

I've actually done that, by the way. While I haven't done it on Mastodon, the post came from the same channel that I'm replying to you from right now, so yes, it went out into the Fediverse and to Mastodon. AFAIK, Mastodon only rejects posts when they exceed 100,000 characters.

https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/item/f8ac991d-b64b-4290-be69-28feb51ba2a7

Here's a justification for this effort:

https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/item/95b6e36d-7fcd-4791-8cc1-c93e8b9975a3

So do blind people know about cornices or herring bone?

I've been wondering that myself.

I've made a series of avatar portraits last year which shall showcase their outfits. All the same avatar, all the same posture, all the same neutral, bright white background, outfits often different in only a few details like colour or material. Three or four portraits in each image, three or four images in each post.

Since they're fashion portraits, technically speaking, and since nobody has got even only a rough idea what avatars generally look like in these worlds, the images require full and detailed visual descriptions. This is why I haven't posted them yet: The image descriptions are still far from done.

In many cases, the avatar is wearing a sport jacket with herringbone pattern tweed textures. I'm still not sure whether or not I must give a description what this fabric pattern looks like, even though, admittedly, various actually blind Mastodon users have told me that I can take it as a given. Maybe for them, but for everyone?

Likewise, in many cases, the avatar is wearing full brogue leather shoes. Can I assume that it's generally known what full brogue shoes look like? Can't I? Can I, but will I still have to give a full, detailed description of these shoes because not all full brogue shoes look the same, and/or because I can't assume that anyone (much less everyone) knows what these shoes look like in this virtual world specifically?

CC: @Dgar

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

@Tor Iver Wilhelmsen For starters, making it a hard technical requirement on the server side would exclude and discriminate against

actually blind or visually-impaired people who do post images regardless
neurodivergent people who, due to their disability, are incapable of turning images into words

Besides, what's "the platform"? Only Mastodon or the whole Fediverse?

Just in case you didn't know: The Fediverse server applications that can send posts with images and other media onto your timeline include, but aren't limited to:

Mastodon
Glitch
Hometown
Pleroma
Akkoma
Misskey
Calckey
Firefish
Iceshrimp-JS
Iceshrimp.NET
CherryPick
Sharkey
Meisskey
GoToSocial
snac
Hollo
Tootik
Mitra
micro.blog
Smithereen
Socialhome
Friendica
Hubzilla (that's what this comment came from)
(streams)
Forte
Pixelfed
Vernissage
PeerTube
Loops
Plume
WriteFreely (needs an external image host, but still)
WordPress
Ghost
nodeBB
Lemmy
/kbin
Mbin
PieFed

If "the platform" means something with one development team, it's only Mastodon. And everything else I've listed above, and then some, is free to keep alt-text optional.

If "the platform" means the whole Fediverse, this means that well over 100 Fediverse server applications, all being developed independently from another and especially from Mastodon, often working vastly differently from Mastodon, would have to make it impossible to post images without alt-text. This, by the way, is next to impossible to implement on at least some of them due to the way they handle images and therefore alt-text.

And you can be certain about one thing: If the Mastodon developers add something to Mastodon, it's very unlikely that Mario Vavti and Harald Eilertsen, the Hubzilla developers, and Mike Macgirvin, inventor of Friendica and Hubzilla and still developer of (streams) and Forte, will follow suit. Other server applications won't because they're dead in spite of still having running servers (Calckey, Firefish, /kbin etc.), they're in maintenance mode which means they won't get new features (Iceshrimp-JS), or their development is on hold (Plume).

CC: @Dgar

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #Blind #VisuallyImpaired #Neurodivergent #Neurodivergence

@Dgar Of course, this means that having any undescribed images on your timeline or stream is a risk, no matter how far back they are.

There could always be someone who discovers you. Who decides to check your timeline or stream in their Mastodon app (as opposed to checking the original in their Web browser). Who stumbles upon an old image post of yours, over three years old, before you've discovered alt-text and its important, especially before you actually started putting some effort into driving your image descriptions to perfection. Who finds that post cute or funny without checking whether the image has an alt-text or not. Or how old it is. Who not only likes (as in faves) it, but boosts it to 5,000 followers, 4,950 of whom are on Mastodon.

And before you know it, thousands of Mastodon users permanently block you for something you haven't done over three years ago because they don't check how old your post is either. All they see is an image without alt-text. Or because they do expect everyone everywhere in the Fediverse to go and add alt-texts to every last image they've ever posted.

This could happen to me.

The obvious remedy would be for me to actually go through my entire backlog of old posts and describe all the images in them. Sounds like a good idea if it takes you two minutes tops to describe one image. But I'm not going to do that for three reasons.

One, it takes me hours to describe one virtual world rendering. Days if it's more complex. It'd take me longer to describe one image than it'd take the average Mastodon user to describe their entire image backlog.

I actually haven't posted a single new in-world image in almost a year and a half because it takes so much time and effort to describe them. I have a bunch of seemingly simple avatar portraits with a feature-less, neutral, bright white background, the descriptions of which I've been working on for about a year now, and they're still far from finished, also because I now have to edit technical terms and jargon out and/or explain more of those technical terms and that jargon. It'd take me forever to describe these old images which I haven't even optimised for "quick" and "easy" describing.

Two, here on Hubzilla, unlike on Mastodon, adding an alt-text means editing the post. Which, in turn, might mean that the edited posts go out anew, being perceived by at least some Fediverse software as brand-new posts. However, at least some of them are very outdated, e.g. announcements for 2022 events.

Three, from the newest image post that got a brand-new description to the oldest image post that already had one and thus didn't need a new one, there'd be a sharp decline in image description quality and level of detail. I'd basically have to go and upgrade all my existing image descriptions because all of them are outdated by my current standards. I'd have to describe them all at the same level of detail. I'd have to upgrade the explanations. I'd have to cut the jargon and explain more. I'd have to change the way I've described colours and dimensions.

In fact, some of the more recent ones contain descriptions of images within the image and, in one case, even what amounts to descriptions of images in images within the image. I've onced used over 4,000 characters to describe an image within one of my images that's only 30 pixels wide and 10 pixels high. However, in my longest image description to date, I decided against describing images within the image because there would have been so many, sometimes four levels deep, that it would have gone completely out of hand: One image within that image contained several dozen images itself which, in turn, contained probably a hundred images or more.

In order for all my image descriptions to be on the same level of quality and detail from the beginning to today, I'd either have to cut the existing descriptions of images within an image although even the three-levels-deep descriptions are actually important. Or I'd have to go and add the missing descriptions of images within the image, no matter how levels deep. This, by the way, isn't even possible. That image with the dozens of images with a hundred images shows a place that no longer exists, so I can't go there and take a closer and better look at what the image within my image shows than if I only looked at that image.

I might need a rule for when to describe images within images and when not to describe them. Something that includes "if they matter within the context of the image" and "not if I have to walk or teleport to the place shown in the image in my image to describe that image"; the former might or might not override the latter. Maybe add a three-level limit because I have third-level image descriptions that are important while not being overwhelmingly long.

That is, in some cases, upgrading the image descriptions would be difficult, if not completely impossible, because the places shown in my images don't exist anymore either. I can't go back there and take measurements and take new looks at the colours to describe them the appropriate way and such. Other places may have changed; certain details may be different now or gone entirely.

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

@Dgar This, by the way, is why I describe my original images, my virtual world renderings, twice. Once in the post text body, once in the alt-text.

There is always a long description that goes into full detail, that includes all explanations necessary to understand the image and its description, and if there's any text anywhere within the borders of the image (regardless of whether it can be read in the image, for I can read it in-world), there a verbatim transcript of it. As the long description tends to grow very long, often tens of thousands of characters, it goes into the post text body. (Here on Hubzilla, my "character limit" is over 16.7 million.)

And then there is a shorter, but still long description in the alt-text which leaves some room within the 1,500-character limit for me to tell my readers about the long description in the post text. This description, all by itself, is mostly there because a not-too-lacking image description in the alt-text is a hard requirement if your post goes out to Mastodon. Distilling the short description from the long one may take me another hour or two. In combination ("short" image description + hint at the long image description in the post), my alt-texts tend to end up either exactly 1,500 characters long or only a few characters short.

Having two descriptions for each image was even more justified not too long ago when Mastodon hid the post text behind a CW, but not the images. Since my image posts inevitably have to exceed 500 characters, and since they do so by huge magnitudes, I have to hide them behind a long post CW.

So, back then, people saw the images, but they did not see the post text, so they did not know about the huge image description behind the CW that took me something between five hours and two full days to research for and write. Maybe they stopped reading the CW at the announced length of the post and decided not to bother. They didn't even read the entire CW which, at least in some later cases, also told them that the post behind the CW contained a long image description.

Hadn't I added an extra image description into the alt-text, I would have been mass-blocked by people who simply couldn't see an image description or any hint of an image description right off the bat. In addition to being mass-blocked by people who blocked me because there was no sufficient image description in the alt-text, regardless of the huge one in the post, because, you know, there must be an image description in the alt-text, full stop.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

Interesting to see how popular this post of mine has become today, what with how many Mastodon users are faving and boosting it.

This makes me wonder how they would react if I gave them an unsolicited lecture on never adding explanations or other exclusive information to an alt-text and generally never writing around their character limits in alt-text. Or why line breaks and the quotation marks on your keyboard must never be used in alt-text.

As of late, people would rather lash out against me if I did that.

(@Mastodon users: If it has a different colour than the rest of the text, it's a link. Even if it isn't a URL in plain sight.)

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta

@StarkRG

You don't have to describe every little detail, just the important ones to the topic at hand.

What if the image is the topic at hand? What if the post is about the image? What if the post is not about one specific element in the image, but about the whole scenery? What if everything in the image matters all the same within the context of the post?

Also, to quote @Celine warns of Idiocracy:

And, I am imagining what I would like to know about a picture, if I couldn't see it.

What if, on top of it all, the image shows something that may make people so super curious that they want to know everything about it? And what if, at the same time, what the image shows is so super obscure that nobody knows what anything in the image looks like because nobody has ever seen any of it ever before?

Because that's pretty much standard for me. For I don't post real-life photos. I post renderings from 3-D virtual worlds that not even one out of 200,000 Fediverse users has heard of.

Here are some examples of images that I've actually posted into the Fediverse from this very channel that I'm replying from right now. These links don't take you to the posts so you don't have to wade through 60,000+ or 70,000+ characters each. They only take you to the image files and where they are stored in my file space.

https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/photos/jupiter_rowland/image/a747d202-e2a9-482b-a6f1-a7a6992c9fd8

https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/photos/jupiter_rowland/image/477ad45f-6bfc-4ac2-b552-639fd049a344

https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/photos/jupiter_rowland/image/52514d5d-7608-4828-80e0-adbea862b2f7

https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/photos/jupiter_rowland/image/b1e7bf9c-07d8-45b6-90bb-f43e27199295

(Apologies for the lack of image descriptions there. These pages are not meant to be directly presented to an audience; besides, unlike posts, they don't federate to other people's timelines. But rest assured, I have described them all, and I've described them at levels of detail that probably even you couldn't possibly imagine. If you want to read the descriptions, ask, and I'll provide you with links to the posts with these images in them. Just be warned: The descriptions of the first three images are very outdated by my current standards, and the description of the fourth image is still somewhat outdated.)

CC: @Dgar

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

Seriously, never before have I seen as many condolence posts and comments and actions on OpenSimWorld as for @Luna Lunaria. And never before have I seen two independent memorial events being scheduled for one member of the community. (Unfortunately, one will be in the middle of the night for me.)

This is even more remarkable when you consider that she was a commercial merchant who sold most of her creations for money. Even some of the "Never buy in OpenSim" die-hards appear to mourn her. After all, her creations are worth the money, especially the buildings. I doubt that there's anything exclusive to Second Life that comes close to that monumental art déco event location appropriately called (CW for the link: eye contact) "The Majestic". (Sadly, we'll never get a PBR "Majestic" now, as gorgeous it is with Blinn-Phong textures.)

So I guess (I actually hope) that her passing won't be seen as an opportunity to copybot her creations, rebox them and offer them as freebies somewhere, now that she can't do anything against it anymore. I mean, her content isn't going to go anywhere. @Lone Wolf has said her sims will stay online. I hope that even the anti-capitalist activists and the freebie store owners who are constantly looking for exclusive, top-notch-quality content won't have the heart to bot or god-mode her stuff, especially seeing as her creations are so unique that nobody can get away with rebranding Luna's works as their own original creations.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #Death #CWDeath

#LongPost

Client Info