Jetzt will ich's wirklich wissen.

Gibt's in deutschsprachigen Mastodon-Kreisen wirklich keine Qualitätskriterien für Alt-Texte? Keine Erwartungen an Alt-Texte? Ist es wirklich scheißegal, wie Bilder beschrieben werden, Hauptsache, sie werden beschrieben?

Oder ist es einfach nur verpönt, darüber zu reden?

#FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #Bildbeschreibung #Bildbeschreibungen #BildbeschreibungenMeta #CWBildbeschreibungenMeta

I'm pretty sure that posting this will turn out completely futile. But I'll try anyway.

I'm especially asking the Mastodon alt-text enforcers: How must foreign-language text be transcribed, both by Web accessibility standards and by Mastodon's alt-text standards?

Let's assume I have some text in an image that's in a different language than the post and therefore in a different language than the image description. But I still have to transcribe it.

Now, according to image-describing rules, text must always be transcribed 100% verbatim. Word by word, character by character, exactly identical to the original in the image.

Here's the catch: Screen reader software may not be able to reliably switch the language in which they read out text in the middle of a description. They definitely cannot switch the language in the middle of an alt-text, I know that, just like they cannot navigate within alt-text.

This means that if I describe an image in English, but there's French text somewhere, a screen reader may read it out as gobbledygook instead of proper French. It may read the French text like it's English.

But even if the screen reader did read out the French text in proper French, someone who doesn't understand French won't understand the text.

This leaves me with two options:

• Transcribe the foreign-language text verbatim, add a translation afterwards.
  This would make the foreign-language text understandable, but it would also produce gobbledygook.
• Give a translated transcript of the foreign-language text that's as close to the original as possible.
  No gobbledygook, but I'd break the rule of always transcribing text verbatim.

The latter option would produce weird results if applied to a sign with essentially the same text in French, English and German where the French and German texts translate into something that slightly differs from both each other and the English text. I've happened upon this before.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Transcript #Transcripts #ScreenReader #ScreenReaders #ForeignLanguage #Inclusion #A11y #Accessibility

I've just discovered a certain Mastodon account that seems to automatically post images of Second Life avatars. It can be lucky to only have eight followers, one of them being a search engine, the others being Second Life users.

If it had more follower, it would certainly already have met the wrath of the wider Mastodon community, especially the Mastodon HOA, for breaking Mastodon's unwritten rules.

And I'm not even talking about nigh-nudity in some of the images with no warning, no image flagging, no hashtag. I'm talking about the alt-texts that are vastly below Mastodon's requirements and quality standards for alt-texts.

Granted, all things considered, the requirements for good image descriptions by Mastodon's standards have to be extremely hard and tedious to meet, at least by my personal estimations. In fact, they have to be impossible to meet on Mastodon itself due to its tiny character limit, and if this account was somewhere where it could meet these requirements, it'd probably be blocked by loads of Mastodon accounts for its excessively long posts due to the long image descriptions.

But if more Mastodon users knew it right now, it'd probably be blocked by many more Mastodon accounts than follow it.

If you post from virtual worlds into the Fediverse, you simply cannot win in the long run. You'll lose either way.

#SecondLife #Metaverse #VirtualWorld #VirtualWorlds #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #Mastodon #MastodonHOA #MastodonCulture

I've noticed that Hubzilla 11.4 handles mentions and hashtags (closer to) the Twitter way instead of the Identi.ca way now. The @ and the # became part of the link (@Jupiter's Fedi-Memes on (streams), #Hashtag, for example).

I wouldn't cry out "pandering to Mastodon" now. I don't think this happened in the same vein as Forte giving the choice between starting an enclosed conversation and starting a microblogging-style loose thread. After all, it's vanilla Mastodon out of all microblogging applications that handles the old Identi.ca way quite gracefully. And even what didn't work as intended didn't cause a big mess instead either.

Other Fediverse applications are way less prepared for this. From the Mastodon fork Glitch to all the *keys and, I think, the *omas, not only can't they handle the Identi.ca way, but they tend to fail rather ungracefully because they don't even expect anything else than the Twitter way. Especially on Misskey, this has been recognised as a bug in 2024 already, and nothing much has happened in terms of fixing it. Of course, all the Forkeys have inherited the bug, and I think none of them has fixed it instead of waiting for upstream Misskey to fix it. I'm not even sure if Iceshrimp.NET, a complete rewrite in C#, hasn't re-implemented it.

I mean, if lots of Fediverse server applications render Hubzilla's old "#Hashtag" (with the number sign outside the link, the Identi.ca way) as its Markdown representation, "#[Hashtag](https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/search?tag=Hashtag)", and people keep complaining, then someone has to step in and put an end to this mess. And lots of fingers were pointing at Hubzilla. While tens of thousands of Mastodon accounts blocked Hubzilla channels for their long posts, hundreds of *key accounts blocked Hubzilla channels for how completely messed up their hashtags came out.

Also, unless I'm completely wrong, the first Fediverse server application that handled mentions and hashtags the Twitter way rather than the Identi.ca way wasn't Mastodon either; it was GNU social, itself a fork of StatusNet, the software that used to power Identi.ca before its switch to pump.io.

So this wasn't a case of Hubzilla acting up on Mastodon. It was a case of Hubzilla acting up across at least half the Fediverse, Mastodon actually largely excluded.

That is, it may still worry you that Hubzilla whose foundation was laid in May, 2012, based on Friendica which is another two years older, adapted to software which came later instead of playing the "we were here first" card. A whole lot of software which came later and which was largely created independently from Mastodon (although both Mastodon and Pleroma started their lives as something akin to alternative frontends for GNU social), but still.

By the way, don't Friendica, (streams) and Forte still cause the same issue? Especially Forte that has actually started pandering to Mastodon as of late?

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #GlitchSoc #Pleroma #Akkoma #Misskey #Forkey #Forkeys #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #Hubzilla11 #Hashtags #HashtagMeta #CWHashtagMeta #Mention #Mentions #MentionTag

Yeah, I get it.

Mastodon and its users rule supreme over the Fediverse. After all, the Fediverse was invented by Gargron. It started when Mastodon started, and everything that isn't Mastodon just latched onto Mastodon and its Fediverse.

Mastodon users are the only civilised users in the Fediverse, the only ones with something like a culture. The Fediverse culture is Mastodon's culture as defined in the spring of 2022. All those who don't live by Mastodon's culture are uncivilised, uneducated, savage barbarians. And it isn't just the Mastodon users' right and privilege to educate them and shape them into good Mastodon users, it's their duty.

Even when it turns out that these barbarians aren't even on Mastodon, that they're on something that's very much not Mastodon, they can't possibly have a culture of their own. After all, they don't live by Mastodon's culture, and if it isn't Mastodon's culture, it isn't culture at all. Not even if it predates Mastodon's current culture by over a decade like Friendica's culture does.

Of course, this also means that when non-Mastodon users come and give Mastodon users unsolicited "advice" or recommend them to use Mastodon in a certain way that goes against Mastodon's culture, the Mastodon users are fully justified to silence them by any means available.

What this means:

When a Mastodon user uses "Fediverse" and "Mastodon" mutually synonymously, it's the right thing to do because that's part of Mastodon's culture. And it makes things easier to understand.

When a non-Mastodon user explains that the Fediverse is not only Mastodon, and that "Fediverse" and "Mastodon" do not mean the same, it's evil and intrusive and deeply disturbing.

When a Mastodon user refers to any message in the Fediverse as a "toot", it's the right thing to do because that's part of Mastodon's culture.

When a Misskey or Forkey user talks about "notes", it's irritating. When a Friendica or Hubzilla or (streams) or Forte user distinguishes between "posts" and "comments", it has even less of a place in the Mastodon Fediverse.

Features that only Mastodon has are actually mandatory for the whole Fediverse. Any Fediverse server software that hasn't got these features implemented in exactly the same way as Mastodon is broken.

Features in non-Mastodon Fediverse server software that Mastodon doesn't have are wrong and evil and not allowed to be used.

Mastodon users are allowed, justified and expected to tell non-Mastodon users to limit their posts to no more than 500 characters. It especially disturbs those who refuse to move away from the official Mastodon phone app.

Non-Mastodon users are not allowed to tell Mastodon users to not cut their long posts into threads.

Mastodon users are allowed, justified and expected to tell non-Mastodon users to put content warnings into their summary/abstract field.

Mastodon users are allowed, justified and expected to tell non-Mastodon users to only use their summary/abstract field for content warnings. After all, that's what Gargron invented that field for.

Non-Mastodon users are not allowed to tell non-Mastodon users that it was Evan Prodromou who invented that field as early as 2008. That he invented it as a summary field. That it was actually a Mastodon user who repurposed that field for CWs in 2017, the year after Mastodon was launched. Gargron only let it pass.

Non-Mastodon users are not allowed to use that field for anything else than CWs.

Non-Mastodon users are not allowed to add hashtags instead of CWs so that reader-side CWs can automatically be generated by filters. Even though Mastodon itself has literally introduced this very feature with version 4.0 in October, 2022.

Mastodon users are allowed, justified and expected to tell non-Mastodon users to not only write alt-texts for all the images they post, but to write them nicely long and detailed. After all, they've got 1,500 characters for alt-texts.

Misskey and Forkey users are not allowed to tell Mastodon users to limit their alt-texts to no more than 512 characters because that's the maximum that Misskey and the Forkeys accept, and on top of that, due to a bug, they delete all alt-texts longer than that. From a Misskey/Forkey point of view, writing long alt-texts is like not writing any alt-texts at all. But the Misskey/Forkey point of view is invalid in Mastodon's culture.

Mastodon users are allowed, justified and expected to toot to Lemmy any way they want, and that's the Mastodon way. If it doesn't work properly on Lemmy, then Lemmy is broken.

Lemmy users, even Lemmy moderators, and other users of Fediverse software that supports groups are not allowed to tell Mastodon users how to post to Lemmy in a way that Lemmy understands.

Mastodon users are allowed, justified and expected to even tell Lemmy users to limit their "toots" to no more than 500 characters and use hashtags, but not too many of them.

Lemmy users and even Lemmy moderators are not allowed to tell Mastodon users to stop spamming Lemmy with mentions and with hashtags that don't work on Lemmy anyway, also because both highly irritate the Lemmy users. Almost all of them came straight from Reddit after their third-party apps were killed, and almost none of them have ever been on Twitter or Mastodon.

Mastodon users and Mastodon admins are allowed and justified to block any and all non-Mastodon servers because they misbehave by Mastodon's standards.

(streams) and Forte admins are not allowed to block the entirety of Mastodon, all present and future servers, by user agent (which, by the way, they're totally capable of) because it misbehaves by their standards. Mastodon doesn't misbehave, and the Hubzilla/(streams)/Forte standards are all wrong if they differ from Mastodon's standards.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #MastodonFediverse #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #Misskey #Forkey #Forkeys #Iceshrimp #Iceshrimp-JS #Sharkey #CherryPick #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #Lemmy #MastodonCulture #FediverseCulture #MastodonCentricity #MastodonNormativity

More and more Mastodon users are acting like alt-texts for profile images are becoming mandatory Fediverse-wide. Never mind that they're currently being rolled out by and by and only on Mastodon even.

Here on Hubzilla, they aren't even a thought, also because Hubzilla doesn't know the concept of images having their own dedicated alt-text database field. (Before you ask: Hubzilla handles images and therefore alt-texts in messages vastly differently from Mastodon to begin with.)

At the same time, more and more Mastodon users are acting like image descriptions for the images in the link previews that are generated automatically in Mastodon timelines are becoming mandatory Fediverse-wide. Never mind that Mastodon itself has barely got enough character capacity to describe these preview images at the high level of detail that so many Mastodon users love, what with its meagre default character limit of 500.

Also, never mind that you'll have to edit your post to describe the preview image because it only appears after you've tooted your toot, so you can't see it before you toot your toot.

Also, never mind that everyone outside Hubzilla will get an image description for an image that's entirely absent because they don't have Mastodon-style link previews, because these link previews are a Mastodon-only thing.

Again, this is even worse here on Hubzilla. Unlike Mastodon, Hubzilla has a preview button that lets you look at your message before you actually send it. But Hubzilla doesn't generate link previews. And Hubzilla's preview button doesn't offer you the option to show you what your message will look like on Mastodon.

So I'd have to

• write and send my message as usual
• switch to a tab with mastodon.social
• look for my message by using the hashtag search
• check whether Mastodon has generated a link preview, and if so, which image it has chosen
• find a copy of the image with the highest resolution possible;
  alternatively, if it's an in-world image from OpenSim, log into OpenSim, travel to that place and take a close look at the place to write a highly detailed image description (takes from five hours to two days)
• switch back to my Hubzilla tab
• edit my message
• add the image description
• re-count the characters in the message
• edit the message
• add a long post content warning with the current character count if there is none, and it isn't a comment; edit the character count of the existing long post content warning if there already is one
• save the edit
• discover that Mastodon hasn't recognised my edit as such, and now there are two copies of the same message on Mastodon, the old one without the image description and the new, longer one with the image description

All just to describe an image that isn't even there for my fellow Hubzilla users. Nor is it there for my contacts on Friendica, (streams), Forte, Misskey, Iceshrimp-JS, Iceshrimp.NET, Sharkey, Pleroma, Akkoma, snac2, GoToSocial, Hollo, Socialhome, Mitra, PieFed, Wafrn etc.

By the way, if a message comes from something else than Mastodon, and there's no actual link in it, Mastodon often creates a link preview for the profile or channel page of whoever has sent the message and picks their profile photo as the image for the link preview. Essentially, I'd have to reliably know when Mastodon does that, write two image descriptions for my profile photo (it's a rendering from OpenSim, and I always describe these twice; besides, people should have a shorter description next to my usual detailed description) and copy-paste both into each post for which Mastodon will generate a link preview for my channel page.

Fortunately, Mastodon doesn't show Hubzilla profiles or channels like Hubzilla itself shows them, and neither do Mastodon apps. Otherwise, if Mastodon users figure out that the background image of my channel is part of my channel customisation and not a default Hubzilla Web UI element, they may demand I add an alt-text for the background image, lest I be mass-blocked as an ableist.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Ableist #Ableism #AbleismMeta #CWAbleismMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Hubzilla #MastodonCulture #FediverseCulture #MastodonCentricity #MastodonNormativity

So there's a new attack vector for Mastodon users against non-Mastodon users in the making.

Mastodon is rolling out alt-texts for what we on Hubzilla call the profile photo and the cover photo. It won't be long until it becomes mandatory in Mastodon's culture to have alt-texts for both these pictures. Regardless of how new this feature is and how many other features that were introduced between March, 2022 and now have not made it into Mastodon's culture and Mastodon's unwritten rules, by the way.

At this point, Mastodon's alt-text activists will start attacking anyone and everyone whom they catch without alt-texts for these two pictures. At least they'll lecture them about the importance of alt-texts. Or they'll block them outright.

What they won't realise:

• Not everyone in the Fediverse is on Mastodon. Just because you see something on your Mastodon Web UI or in your Mastodon app, doesn't mean it's on or from Mastodon itself.
• In fact, that particular user might not be on Mastodon.
• Just because Mastodon rolls out a new feature, doesn't mean everything in the Fediverse rolls out the same feature at the same time. This means that there's a whole lot of Fediverse server software that does not offer alt-texts for profile pictures, and that probably won't offer them for quite a while or ever.
• Also, Mastodon's culture is not and will never be the culture of the whole Fediverse. Sorry, Mastodon fundamentalists, but some software has been here before Mastodon, its culture is older than Mastodon itself, and it's technologically incompatible with Mastodon's unwritten rules.

Here on Hubzilla, where I'm posting from right now (in case you really thought I'm on Mastodon just like you), there is no such thing as a dedicated field for alt-texts anywhere. Even if you want to post pictures, there is no alt-text entry mask, and there is no alt-text database field for the images.

Instead, both images and alt-texts are handled like on a blog: You embed the image somewhere in the post text using markup code. In a sense, you program the image into the post. And if you want the image to have alt-text, you have to program the alt-text into the image-embedding code. If you're afraid of coding, Hubzilla is not for you.

But if there's no entry mask and no database field for alt-texts in posts, there won't be either for the profile images either. That is, unless Hubzilla adopts the alt-text field from (streams) and Forte where alt-texts can be added to uploaded images in the Photo app so that they're automatically inserted whenever you embed an image in a message. Using that alt-text field for profile images should be trivial then.

If you want or need the images in my profile described: I don't have a description for my profile photo. For my cover photo, I actually have two. They're both in this post: https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/display/c796febd-8ce2-472b-a46b-23fdf6b16f18. One is in the alt-text which you probably can't open when you're on a phone; the alt-text is 1,500 characters long, a bit over 1,400 of which are visual description. The other one is in the post text itself. But you'd better have a lot of time at your hand because it's over 60,000 characters long, and it'll probably take you a few hours to read it.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Hubzilla #MastodonCulture #FediverseCulture #MastodonCentricity #MastodonNormativity

(Ausnahmsweise auch mal auf Deutsch. Die englische Version ist hier.)

Bildbeschreibungen sind wichtig im Fediverse, zumindest wenn eure Posts möglicherweise auf Mastodon landen werden. Aber geht es nur um Bildbeschreibungen ganz allgemein? Geht es nur darum, überhaupt Bildbeschreibungen zu haben? Oder geht es auch um die Qualität der Bildbeschreibungen?

Blinde oder sehbehinderte Nutzer sagen, daß alles besser ist als nichts. Aber seien wir mal ehrlich, der Dateiname der Bilddatei als Alt-Text ist nutzlos. Eine Kopie des Post-Texts im Alt-Text auch; mindestens eine Handy-App für Mastodon macht das scheinbar automatisch. Irgendwelcher Kauderwelsch, der in den Alt-Text reingeschrieben wird, damit da irgendein Alt-Text steht, ist auch nutzlos.

Also schreibt ihr eine kurze Bildbeschreibung für euren Alt-Text. Das sollte viel besser sein als nichts.

Und dann werdet ihr kritisiert und sanktioniert, weil eure Bildbeschreibung nicht detailliert genug ist.

Weil ihr eine längere Bildbeschreibung nicht schreiben könnt oder wollt, überlaßt ihr das einer KI.

Und dann werdet ihr kritisiert und sanktioniert, weil eure Bildbeschreibung offensichtlicher KI-Slop ist. Die KI ist ungenau, sie halluziniert, sie identifizert Sachen falsch, und sie läßt immer noch Details aus.

Okay, also setzt ihr euch hin und steckt einen Haufen Zeit und Aufwand in eine handgeschriebene Bildbeschreibung, die gleichermaßen akkurat und detailliert ist. Zumindest glaubt ihr das.

Und es könnte immer noch jemand kommen und euch kritisieren und/oder sanktionieren, weil ihr bestimmte Details ausgelassen habt.

Wenn ihr eure Bildbeschreibung nicht zu deren Zufriedenheit in Ordnung bringt, dann werdet ihr als ableistisch beschimpft und blockiert mit öffentlichem Trara, damit möglichst viele andere Nutzer euch auch blockieren mögen.

Nun entwickeln sich die Mindestanforderungen für Bildbeschreibungen über die Jahre immer weiter. Was heute wichtig ist, war vor zwei Jahren nicht unbedingt wichtig. Was heute unwichtig ist, kann in zwei oder fünf Jahren durchaus auf einmal wichtig sein. Heute schon kritisieren Alt-Text-Aktivisten Bildposts, die schon etliche Jahre alt sind, aufgrund von deren Bildbeschreibungen, die sie als suboptimal ansehen. Das bedeutet, daß die Bildbeschreibungen, die ihr heute schreibt, noch so lange gut genug bleiben müssen, wie eure Bilderposts verfügbar bleiben. Falls nicht, viel Spaß dabei, durch alle eure alten Bilderposts zu gehen, sie alle zu editieren und bei allen die Bildbeschreibungen an die aktuellen Mindestanforderungen anzupassen.

Es gibt nur eine Möglichkeit, langfristig vor Mastodons Alt-Text-Polizei sicher zu sein: Als allererstes müßt ihr euch aufschlauen über die vielen Regeln und Richtlinien für Alt-Texte und Bildbeschreibungen, und darüber gibt's dutzendweise englischsprachige Websites. Man kann unmöglich im voraus wissen, welche dieser Regeln von irgendjemandem bei der Alt-Text-Polizei irgendwann in der Zukunft für zwingend erforderlich erklärt werden, also solltet ihr sie jetzt schon bis aufs i-Tüpfelchen einhalten. Wenn zwei davon sich gegenseitig widersprechen, müßt ihr natürlich wissen, welche davon ihr einzuhalten habt.

Ihr müßt auch wissen, daß die Anforderungen und Qualitätsstandards für gute Alt-Texte und Bildbeschreibungen auf Mastodon ganz andere sind als im ganzen Rest des Web. Was fürs Web gut genug ist, ist nicht zwingend auch gut genug für Mastodon.

Zu guter Letzt müßt ihr euer Publikum kennen. Und normalerweise kann jeder irgendwo im Fediverse oder sogar im Web euer Publikum sein. Es gibt nur ganz wenige Orte im Fediverse, wo ihr steuern könnt, wer in der Lage sein wird, euer Zeugs zu lesen, und Mastodon gehört nicht dazu. Ihr müßt euer Publikum kennen, und ihr müßt zumindest einschätzen können, was euer Publikum über den Inhalt eures Bildes weiß, was es nicht weiß und was es wissen muß. Wenn euer Publikum nicht zwingend weiß, was etwas ist, erklärt es, aber bitte im Post-Text und nicht im Alt-Text! Wenn euer Publikum nicht zwingend weiß, wie etwas aussieht, das aber vielleicht wissen will, dann beschreibt es.

Bei meinen eigenen Bildern ist meine Strategie, für jedes Bild zwei Beschreibungen zu schreiben. Die eine ist die kurze Bildbeschreibung; die kommt in den Alt-Text. Die werde ich in Zukunft auf maximal 512 Zeichen beschränken, weil Misskey und seine Forks Alt-Texte, die länger als 512 Zeichen sind, löschen. Die andere ist die lange Bildbeschreibung; die kommt in den Post-Text. Die lange Bildbeschreibung ist volldetailliert, sie enthält alle Erklärungen, die zum Verständnis des Bildes und seiner Beschreibungen nötig sind, und sie enthält Transkripte von jedem einzelnen Stück Text, das es irgendwo innerhalb der Grenzen des Bildes gibt, egal, ob auf dem Bild lesbar oder nicht.

Memes zu posten, ist ein Stück weit einfacher. Es gibt nur eine Bildbeschreibung, die hoffentlich kurz genug für den Alt-Text ist. Aber trotzdem habe ich einen ganzen Haufen Sachen zu erklären, und weil ich mich nicht immer auf Links wie nach KnowYourMeme verlassen kann, muß ich oft selbst eine ganze Menge Erklärungen in den Post schreiben.

Idealerweise ist das Schlimmste, was mir passieren kann, daß ich dafür kritisiert werde, daß mein Alt-Text die 200-Zeichen-Marke oder mein Post die 500-Zeichen-Marke überschreitet, oder daß ich für das Letztere blockiert werde. Das Risiko, daß das passiert, reduziere ich mit einer Zusammenfassung, die eine Langer-Post-Inhaltswarnung mit der ungefähren Länge des Post enthält, und den Hashtags #Long, #LongPost, #CWLong, #CWLongPost, #LangerPost und #CWLangerPost, die dann gefiltert werden können.

Aber ich hoffe, daß keiner sagen kann, ich hätte mich nicht genug angestrengt.

#FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Zeichenlimit #Zeichenlimits #ZeichenlimitMeta #CWZeichenlimitMeta #500Zeichen #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #Hashtag #Hashtags #HashtagMeta #CWHashtagMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #Bildbeschreibung #Bildbeschreibungen #BildbeschreibungenMeta #CWBildbeschreibungenMeta

Eye contact is not limited to full facial portraits of people looking directly into the camera.

Eye contact is not even limited to looking directly into the camera at all.

Eye contact is whenever there is at least one eye anywhere in the image. No matter where it is. No matter how small the eye and how big the image is.

Ask autistic people, and they'll likely confirm. And they'll also likely confirm that it triggers them.

In fact, eye contact is even when you, as a neurotypical person, cannot even see the eye because it's less then a pixel.

Imagine an image of 20 megapixels. Now imagine there's a person somewhere in the image, only four pixels high and about one pixel wide. This means the head is half a pixel high and a third of a pixel wide.

Even if the person is looking directly at the camera, this still means that each individual eye is 1/15 of a pixel wide and maybe 1/30 of a pixel high. That's 1/450 or a bit over 0.2% of a pixel. That's about 1/9,000,000,000 or a bit over 0.000,000,01% of the whole image. If the person is looking directly at the camera.

Nonetheless, this may trigger some autistic people even if the person is not even looking into the general direction of the camera.

It doesn't even have to be a person. It may just as well be an animal or a fantasy creature or a robot or a sculpture or a stylised face or even only a single stylised eye.

I've actually had all this confirmed by @Yohan Yukiya Sese Cuneta 사요한🦣 who knows enough actually diagnosed autistic people to know.

So it doesn't matter how big or infinitely small the eye is. It doesn't matter where it's looking. If there's at least one eye in your image, it counts as eye contact.

If you, as the user who posts the image, know for certain that there is at least one eye in the image, you're obliged to

• have the image automatically blanked or blurred
• make sure that Mastodon will blank the image, too
• add the content warning "CW: eye contact" to your post
• add the hashtags #EyeContact and #CWEyeContact to your post, especially the former which some people out there may have filtered

You're only excused not to do so if you yourself honestly don't know that there is at least one eye in the image.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #Hashtag #Hashtags #HashtagMeta #CWHashtagMeta #EyeContactMeta #CWEyeContactMeta #Autism #Autistic #Neurodivergent #Neurodivergence #Inclusion #Inclusivity #A11y #Accessibility

When you see it, you'll shit brix: The Hubzilla timeline.

The "it" that you're supposed to see is:

• The Fediverse did, in fact, not start with Mastodon.
  There was something in the Fediverse before Mastodon: Mistpark was there almost 6 years before Mastodon, Hubzilla was there 10 months before Mastodon.
  Mastodon came into an already existing Fediverse with servers and users and content and a culture.
  The Fediverse has never been only Mastodon. And it will never be.
• The Fediverse had quote-posts almost 6 years before Mastodon.
  (Accurate implication: The non-Mastodon Fediverse can quote-post any public Mastodon toot with no problems, and it has always been able to do so, for as long as Mastodon has been around.)
• The Fediverse had groups almost 6 years before Mastodon which still doesn't even support groups.
• The Fediverse had better lists than Mastodon lists almost 6 years before Mastodon.
• The Fediverse had reply control almost 6 years before Mastodon where people are still waiting for some kind of reply control.
• The Fediverse had permissions almost 6 years before Mastodon where the concept of permissions is completely unknown.

And if you've really paid attention:

• The Fediverse had no character limit to worry about almost 6 years before Mastodon came along with only 500 characters.
  The Fediverse had 16,777,215 characters almost 6 years before Mastodon had 500 characters.
• The Fediverse had full rich-text formatting almost 6 years before Mastodon.
  The Fediverse could generate bold type, italics, underline, code blocks, bullet-point lists etc. without any Unicode trickery. Almost 6 years before Mastodon was there. And more than 12 years before Mastodon could even only display that stuff.

Although it should be blatantly obvious: This here is not a Mastodon toot. This post comes from Hubzilla directly to your Mastodon apps.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Mistpark #Friendica #Hubzilla #FediverseCulture #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #Groups #FediGroups #FediverseGroups #Lists #ReplyControl #Permissions #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #TextFormatting #RichText #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse

@HG Safari will take us to (virtual) Tromsø in the Wolf Territories tomorrow evening. One of the things that place is known for is that its EEP daycycle is automatically sync'd with real-life Tromsø.

This was the first time that I've checked a real-life weather report before visiting a virtual location. And it won't stay the only time.

#OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #HGSafari #WolfTerritories #WolfTerritoriesGrid #WTGrid #WolfGrid #EEP #Norway #Tromsø

Okay, so you're on Mastodon. You've sent a follow request to what you think is another Mastodon account.

Upon confirming your follow request, they've also sent you a follow request. They're obviously curious about what you toot and what you boost.

But:

They aren't on Mastodon. You think they are. But they aren't. They're on Friendica or Hubzilla.

They didn't decide to follow you back. It was their software, Friendica or Hubzilla, that absolutely has to follow you back in order to let you follow someone on it.

See, 𝕏 and Mastodon have "followers" and the concept of "following". Connections that always go one way. Even if there's a "mutual", it's two connections. One that goes one way, one that goes the other way.

Friendica and Hubzilla only have "mutuals", but not as two separate connections in one way each like Mastodon mutuals, but as one connection that goes both ways. Like "friends" on Facebook. They call them "contacts".

Friendica and Hubzilla don't understand one-way "following". They understand Mastodon follow requests as requests to create a two-way connection. And when the request is confirmed, they create a two-way connection.

Mastodon, on the other hand, doesn't understand two-way "contacts". When Friendica or Hubzilla approves a two-way connection, Mastodon understands it as confirming a one-way follow request plus, independently, deliberately, intentionally, sending a follow request back.

However, the follow request you get from a Friendica account or Hubzilla channel that you've just followed was not sent deliberately or intentionally. It was fully automated. It was to turn your follow request into the kind of two-way connection that Friendica and Hubzilla understand.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Friendica #Hubzilla #Connections #Followers #Contacts

I've learned something about alt-texts and image descriptions in the Fediverse again today: You must never talk about alt-texts and image descriptions. Ever.

Oh, sure you're allowed to give all those unsolicited lectures who don't provide alt-texts. Or alt-texts that don't describe the image. Or alt-texts that don't describe the image accurately. Or alt-texts that don't describe the image enough. Or alt-texts that don't describe the image in the right way. Just prepare to be counter-attacked for being an intrusive, mansplaining reply guy, at least in the latter three cases.

But what you must never do, under any circumstances, is attempt to discuss alt-texts and image descriptions. For that's ableist. Even if actually blind or visually-impaired Fediverse users may disagree. But since when does the Mastodon alt-text police listen to them? Or, in fact, to anyone?

You aren't allowed to ever ask if you're doing it right. For that's ableist, too.

You aren't even allowed to think about how to do it right. For that's ableist, too.

Just do it. Literally everything else is ableist.

Oh, but you absolutely must do it the right way. 100% by hand with no AI help whatsoever, even if you're blind or visually-impaired or autistic and unable to turn images into words. Absolutely accurately, at the right level of detail and in the right style. And you must know right off the bat what the right level of detail and the right style is. Without thinking about it.

Thing is: The Mastodon alt-text police have never agreed upon one standard level of detail, depending on the circumstances, and one standard style. Everyone of them thinks that their preferred way is the one and only gold standard, and everyone of them enforces their preferred way as if it's the one and only gold standard. All with no coordination with anyone else.

So you post an image, and you write an alt-text. Just like you think you're required to do. So far, so good.

Then comes Alice from the Mastodon alt-text police and calls you out as ableist because your image description isn't detailed enough. How dare you mention there's something in the image without describing what it looks like? You're supposed to know that you have to do that!

Okay, so you edit it according to Alice's requirements.

Then comes Bob from the Mastodon alt-text police and calls you out as ableist because your image description is too long and too excessively detailed. You're supposed to know that you have to keep your alt-texts short and succinct and only describe what's important within the context of your post! Fun fact: Your original alt-text would have been too detailed for Bob, too.

Needless to say that Alice and Bob have never talked to each other. However, this is not so much due to the Fediverse-wide, Mastodon-imposed ban on discussing alt-texts and image descriptions. It's because both are on Mastodon and only on Mastodon, and Mastodon with its complete lack of support for enclosed conversations, much less groups, is absolutely horrible for discussions.

The only way to get around this is to never post any images or other media. However, if you mention at some point that you don't post images because you're afraid of uncoordinated Mastodon alt-text police attacks because one or some of them find your image descriptions not up to their personal standards, you'll probably be attacked for allegedly trying to weasel out of your responsibility.

Of course, this also means that my WIP wiki about how to describe images and write alt-texts for the Fediverse is pointless. Not only pointless, but its very existence is ableist. And if someone else reads it, they're ableist, too. So don't click or tap that link.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #AltTextPolice #Ableist #Ableism #AbleismMeta #CWAbleismMeta

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

It has finally happened. I was a guest at Inworld Review and interviewed by Thirza Ember and James Atlloud of @HG Safari fame as well as Petlove Petshop today.

Here's the video, redirected to Invidious. (Link instead of embedding so I hopefully don't have to spend months writing a visual description that'll take you days to read or listen to.)

Better yet: Thirza wanted to interview me about the Fediverse. Good thing OpenSim users are already used to things being decentralised because OpenSim itself is. In fact, I could have told her that some of the tropes associated with OpenSim being decentralised apply to the Fediverse as well.

Extra shoutouts to @Elena Rossini for her Fediverse video featured on fediverse.info and to @Dorena Verne as a good example of a grid manager (see Petlove's video in the video) because she has managed to move Dorenas World from a Windows server to a Debian server and considerably speeding it up in the process.

For those who aren't familiar with Inworld Review: It's an OpenSim-themed talkshow on YouTube started by the late Mal Burns many years ago. His whole backlog of almost 400 episodes can be found here. And here is the channel on which Mal's former co-host continue Inworld Review without him with 62 episodes so far.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #InworldReview

Looks like Maria Korolov of Hypergrid Business is hoping for the above to come true, now that Google has made a 3D-world-generating AI. Like, one extensive prompt, and you'll get all this within three seconds.

https://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2026/01/googles-world-building-ai-points-to-exciting-future-for-opensim-creators-or-their-doom/

#OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #HypergridBusiness #SimBuilding #AI

Dereos will celebrate its 11th grid anniversary on Saturday, January 31st, with a beach party at Ko Suai. Music will be supplied by the local DJs.

Important: Party language is German, but I expect there to be a translator.

Taxi: hop://dereos.org:80/ko%20suai

#OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #VirtualEvent #GridAnniversary #Dereos

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

Dorenas World, the oldest German-speaking grid and the third-oldest of all grids, is going to celebrate its 16th anniversary this week. Due to real-life influences, the schedule is somewhat cut short.

All times are in grid time = PST.

Friday, January 16th (actual anniversary date)
11:00: DJ Anachron Young (open end)
Event location: Rock-House, Nihilon
hop://dorenas-world.de:8002/Nihilon/216/167/22

Saturday, January 17th
10:00: Reading by Rubeus Helgerud
11:00: Wolem Wobbit live "Still Alive"
Afterwards: DJ Rubeus Helgerud (open end)
Event location: Festival ground, Landing
hop://dorenas-world.de:8002/Landing/140/149/22

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #DorenasWorld #GridAnniversary

Why does someone call one single Fediverse server, one single website "-verse"?

Because they're probably stuck at freshly-switched-from-the-𝕏-iPhone-app-to-the-Mastodon-iPhone-app level of Fediverse knowledge. They probably don't simply believe that the Fediverse is only Mastodon. No, they must believe that the Fediverse is only one server, one website, namely mastodon.social. They might be unable to imagine that multiple Twitter-like websites that run the same code can communicate with each other. After all, they haven't heard of anything like this having happened before.

Which also means that the guys behind the Forkiverse think that their Forkiverse is every but as much a centralised, single-website walled garden silo as they think the Fediverse, i.e. mastodon.social, is. And that there are exactly two websites running Mastodon code now, namely mastodon.social, for which the Mastodon code was probably developed, and the Forkiverse.

If that's so, they're probably going to go completely insane once they discover that people on mastodon.social start leaving content in their Forkiverse. Or people from wholly different Mastodon servers, something they might not even expect to exist.

And that says nothing about how they'll react upon the first comment on a Forkiverse post from something that's very much, very obviously, very blatantly not Mastodon. Like Friendica or Hubzilla or (streams) or Forte. Something that does everything differently from Mastodon, from 33,000 times more characters to text formatting to bullet-point lists to headlines to very different-looking hashtags and mentions.

I mean, I know that Mastodon users who got used to a Mastodon-only Fediverse frequently lose their minds when they come across the first message that's obviously not from Mastodon, and whose author states and proves that this is not a Mastodon toot. And I've seen at least one tech journalist insist in Mastodon being an enclosed network itself and himself being right because he, very much unlike those filthy amateurs that drivel about Calckey and Friendica and Hubzilla and whatnot, is a journalist and therefore a professional.

But imagine you know next to nothing about Mastodon, other than that mastodon.social is a website that's an alternative to 𝕏, and that it's running on an open-source server application that's also named Mastodon. And then you set up your own website with the same code. And you think it's every bit a walled garden as 𝕏 and as mastodon.social straight out of the box. And then you, as one of the admins and site owners, receive a comment on one of your posts that so very much blatantly not even a Mastodon toot.

Brix will be shat. This will hurt horribly.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #Forkiverse