@Walrus 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 @Ben Royce 🇺🇦 🇸🇩 That's actually a problem if you're on vanilla Mastodon with only 500 characters per toot and only 1,500 characters of alt-text per image. Your only chance would be to spread the transcripts across a massive thread.

If you regularly have to post images with well over 1,500 characters of text in them, you could move elsewhere in the Fediverse that offers more characters, but that's still federated with Mastodon. Examples:

• Misskey has a hard-coded limit of 3,000 characters.
• Sharkey has a configurable limit that defaults to 3,000 characters.
• Pleroma and Akkoma have configurable limits that default to 5,000 characters.
• Friendica and Hubzilla (I'm commenting from the latter right now) are limited to over 16.7 million characters by their databases.
• (streams) (where I post my images nowadays) and Forte are limited to over 24 million characters.

On all of these, you could put text transcripts into the post text body and maybe mention in the alt-text that the texts in the images are transcribed in the post itself.

The downside of this, however, is that your posts will exceed 500 characters. And this means you'll lose a whole lot of reach. There are lots and lots of Mastodon users who block everyone who ever posts over 500 characters at once at first strike because they want Mastodon/the Fediverse to be and remain a 100% pure microblogging "service" with no more than 500 characters.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Pleroma #Akkoma #Misskey #Sharkey #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters

@Arnan It doesn't fit the timelines in the official Mastodon phone app. Which has the only Fediverse user interface out there that cannot fold longer posts in.

The Mastodon Web UI can do that. All third-party Mastodon apps can do that. The Web UIs of just about the whole rest of the Fediverse from Pleroma and Misskey to Friendica and Hubzilla can do that. Phone apps for stuff that isn't Mastodon can do that.

Only the haphazardly developed official Mastodon app can't do that because it's geared towards a Fediverse with only 500 characters, a Fediverse of a kind that has never existed.

Mastodon is not the reference implementation of the Fediverse. And the official Mastodon app is not the reference implementation of Mastodon apps, much less of Fediverse apps. It only exists for there to be something official named "Mastodon" in the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store.

Just because Mastodon tossed out a lack-lustre app in 2022 for those who absolutely need something named "Mastodon" on their phones to access the Fediverse, doesn't mean that Fediverse software that has existed for almost six years longer than Mastodon and twelve years longer than that app must adapt to the existence of that app and cut down its character limit from 16,777,215 to 500 for all those who can't use Mastodon through something with another name on it than "Mastodon".

By the way: Mastodon's way of cutting longer posts up into tiny chunks of no more than 500 characters goes onto the nerves of users of Pleroma, Akkoma, Misskey, Calckey, Firefish, Iceshrimp-JS, Iceshrimp.NET, Sharkey, CherryPick, GoToSocial, snac, Hollo, Socialhome, Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams), Forte and others. But they are not allowed to complain about that, much less tell Mastodon users who do that to move someplace that offers them more characters.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Mastodon #MastodonApp #MastodonApps #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters

When I describe my images, I do so under a few assumptions.

One: My audience is not limited to my following contacts. It's absolutely everyone who comes across any of my posts.

It isn't sufficient to make my posts accessible to those who have chosen to follow me. I must make them just as accessible to a random stranger who receives them after they've been boosted a dozen times over. I must make them just as accessible to a random stranger who stumbles upon them on the public timeline of whatever server they're on.

Two: If an element in an image is mentioned, it must also be described visually.

Blind or visually-impaired people always need to know what something in my images looks like. This goes doubly for my typical original images; I mean, how are they supposed to know what something looks like in a specific 3-D virtual world?

So if there's a building in one of my images, and I mention that this building is there, I also have to give a visual description of it. A full, detailed description.

If there's an image in one of my images, e.g. a preview image on a teleporter that shows the place where the teleporter would take me, I have to fully describe that image. An image in my image that doesn't even take up 200 pixels in my image. (Something that I've refused to do in my longest image description so far because that would have led me to going at least four levels deep: describing loads of infinitely small images in several dozen infinitely small images in an image in my image.)

In fact, this isn't an assumption. I have written confirmation for it. I can't find it right now, otherwise I'd share it here, but I have it somewhere.

Three: Image descriptions must always deliver all information that someone may need right away.

Not everyone wants to ask for a description of a certain detail in an image. Not everyone wants to ask for an explanation of what they don't understand or what they're unfamiliar with. Having to look things up yourself isn't much better. Some may go as far as likening not having an image description that contains everything they need to know to not having any image description.

By the way: It's a fact that some Mastodon users consider linking to external information ableist because linked websites aren't necessarily sufficiently accessible themselves. Instead of linking to information, the information must go into the post itself. (And I can't even use any character limit as an excuse not to do that because my "limit" is over 16.7 million.)

In other words, the only way for me not to be ableist is to give any and all information that anyone out there may require in my image post immediately.

Of course, this will clash with the demand by other Mastodon users (or maybe even some of the same) to never post more than 500 characters at once. But I can't do both. And I've never read anywhere that posting more than 500 characters is allegedly ableist.

Four: Someone somewhere out there may be interested in even small details in my image. And they may not be sighted.

Maybe you aren't. But someone somewhere out there may be. And they matter every bit as much as you or everyone else.

If they need a full description of all details, regardless of why, I have to deliver it. Immediately. See above.

Five: Any and all text within the borders of the image must be transcribed verbatim, no exception.

Most importantly, this even extends to text that's unreadable in the image if I can read and/or source it.

The assumptions further up apply here as well: If I mention it (the text in this case, and be it as part of the visual description of something else like a teleporter), then I must describe (as in transcribe) it. And someone somewhere out there may be interested in it.

If this means that I have to transcribe not one or two, but 20, 30, 40 bits of text in one image, then so be it, so are the rules.

Just because nobody on Mastodon does it, doesn't mean they're doing it right, and I'm doing it wrong. Maybe they don't know what that unreadable text says. Maybe they don't know that someone wants to know what's written there.

Six: All images must have an accurate and sufficiently detailed proper alt-text.

I can spend two days, morning to evening, working on an image description of 60,000 characters. 10,000 words. Three hours worth of reading. I can put the whole thing into the same post as the image. As in the post text body. As opposed to the alt-text for which this description is way too long.

But if the image in the post doesn't have an actual alt-text (and, again, it doesn't because the image description is in the post text itself), Mastodon's alt-text police is likely and fully justified to sanction me regardless.

So no matter how long and detailed and well-researched the long image description in the post is, I still have to distill an additional, shorter image description for the alt-text from it. And I have to do so without cutting too much information. Ideally, without cutting any information. If any of my images need a long description in the post, they need two descriptions, the long one in the post, the shorter one in the alt-text.

Leaving the several dozen individual text transcripts out of the description for the alt-text is risky already because text transcripts belong into the alt-text.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #500Characters #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Ableist #Ableism #AbleismMeta #CWAbleismMeta #Inclusion #Inclusivity #A11y #Accessibility

When I describe my images, I do so under a few assumptions.

One: My audience is not limited to my following contacts. It's absolutely everyone who comes across any of my posts.

It isn't sufficient to make my posts accessible to those who have chosen to follow me. I must make them just as accessible to a random stranger who receives them after they've been boosted a dozen times over. I must make them just as accessible to a random stranger who stumbles upon them on the public timeline of whatever server they're on.

Two: If an element in an image is mentioned, it must also be described visually.

Blind or visually-impaired people always need to know what something in my images looks like. This goes doubly for my typical original images; I mean, how are they supposed to know what something looks like in a specific 3-D virtual world?

So if there's a building in one of my images, and I mention that this building is there, I also have to give a visual description of it. A full, detailed description.

If there's an image in one of my images, e.g. a preview image on a teleporter that shows the place where the teleporter would take me, I have to fully describe that image. An image in my image that doesn't even take up 200 pixels in my image. (Something that I've refused to do in my longest image description so far because that would have led me to going at least four levels deep: describing loads of infinitely small images in several dozen infinitely small images in an image in my image.)

In fact, this isn't an assumption. I have written confirmation for it. I can't find it right now, otherwise I'd share it here, but I have it somewhere.

Three: Image descriptions must always deliver all information that someone may need right away.

Not everyone wants to ask for a description of a certain detail in an image. Not everyone wants to ask for an explanation of what they don't understand or what they're unfamiliar with. Having to look things up yourself isn't much better. Some may go as far as likening not having an image description that contains everything they need to know to not having any image description.

By the way: It's a fact that some Mastodon users consider linking to external information ableist because linked websites aren't necessarily sufficiently accessible themselves. Instead of linking to information, the information must go into the post itself. (And I can't even use any character limit as an excuse not to do that because my "limit" is over 16.7 million.)

In other words, the only way for me not to be ableist is to give any and all information that anyone out there may require in my image post immediately.

Of course, this will clash with the demand by other Mastodon users (or maybe even some of the same) to never post more than 500 characters at once. But I can't do both. And I've never read anywhere that posting more than 500 characters is allegedly ableist.

Four: Someone somewhere out there may be interested in even small details in my image. And they may not be sighted.

Maybe you aren't. But someone somewhere out there may be. And they matter every bit as much as you or everyone else.

If they need a full description of all details, regardless of why, I have to deliver it. Immediately. See above.

Five: Any and all text within the borders of the image must be transcribed verbatim, no exception.

Most importantly, this even extends to text that's unreadable in the image if I can read and/or source it.

The assumptions further up apply here as well: If I mention it (the text in this case, and be it as part of the visual description of something else like a teleporter), then I must describe (as in transcribe) it. And someone somewhere out there may be interested in it.

If this means that I have to transcribe not one or two, but 20, 30, 40 bits of text in one image, then so be it, so are the rules.

Just because nobody on Mastodon does it, doesn't mean they're doing it right, and I'm doing it wrong. Maybe they don't know what that unreadable text says. Maybe they don't know that someone wants to know what's written there.

Six: All images must have an accurate and sufficiently detailed proper alt-text.

I can spend two days, morning to evening, working on an image description of 60,000 characters. 10,000 words. Three hours worth of reading. I can put the whole thing into the same post as the image. As in the post text body. As opposed to the alt-text for which this description is way too long.

But if the image in the post doesn't have an actual alt-text (and, again, it doesn't because the image description is in the post text itself), Mastodon's alt-text police is likely and fully justified to sanction me regardless.

So no matter how long and detailed and well-researched the long image description in the post is, I still have to distill an additional, shorter image description for the alt-text from it. And I have to do so without cutting too much information. Ideally, without cutting any information. If any of my images need a long description in the post, they need two descriptions, the long one in the post, the shorter one in the alt-text.

Leaving the several dozen individual text transcripts out of the description for the alt-text is risky already because text transcripts belong into the alt-text.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #500Characters #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Ableist #Ableism #AbleismMeta #CWAbleismMeta #Inclusion #Inclusivity #A11y #Accessibility

@RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist Yup. Mastodon clings hard to being purist, minimalist, old-school, original-gangsta microblogging. It's a miracle actually that Mastodon 4.0, released in October, 2022, introduced the displaying of some text formatting.

It says a lot that the character limit of 500 is hard-coded. It is not configurable. Digging into the source and modifying a file that'll be overwritten by git upon the next upgrade is not configuration, it's a fork. Also, Mastodon apparently keeps changing the way of raising the character limit, probably to keep admins from diverging from The Mastodon Way.

There is no technological reason within the Fediverse itself to limit posts to this length.

The software that I'm posting through is older than Mastodon by almost four years. It has been what it is now for ten months longer than Mastodon has existed. It was the first Fediverse software to adopt ActivityPub, two months before Mastodon. And, unlike Mastodon, it plays ActivityPub by the book as far as possible/feasible.

Still, it has a character limit of, wait for it, 16,777,215. That's the maximum size of the database field for the post text. These characters include alt-texts because images are embedded into posts by hotlinking to them rather than being file attachments, but they do not include summaries (= Mastodon CWs) because they've got their own database field.

Not only is it possible to practically not have a character limit at all, but it has actually been done, and it's fully compatible with Mastodon (only that Mastodon rejects posts with over 100,000 characters AFAIK, another arbitrary design decision which makes even less sense).

CC: @Cory Doctorow

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Hubzilla #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #500Characters

@C.Suthorn :prn:

And note: this toot has more than 500 characters, but comes from mastodon (as you can see), in case you didn't know that toots on mastodon can have more than 500 characters.

I know that. But I also know that not exactly few Mastodon users completely freak out when they see something longer than 500 characters.

#FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Mastodon #CharacterLimit #500Characters

@utopiArte I wasn't only posting this with raw technology in mind. I was also thinking about cultural differences that arose from the technological differences.

Friendica and Hubzilla are technologically very different from Mastodon. Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams) users are rather used to that. They try to cope with it the best they can, although this alone brings its own bunch of issues with itself.

Mastodon users, on the other hand, are not used to it. Many of them have come to Mastodon from Twitter over the last two years, believing that Mastodon is only one Web site. And pretty much all of them, every last one of them, came to Mastodon, believing that the Fediverse that everyone talks about is Mastodon. And nothing else.

Those who have invited them to Mastodon have not told them that Mastodon is connected to things that aren't Mastodon, much less that Mastodon is connected to things that are very much not Mastodon.

Nearly all Twitter refugees on Mastodon have spent their first several months on Mastodon in this belief. They've settled into and gotten used to a Fediverse that's only Mastodon.

Many, not all of them, but many have since found out that there are things in the Fediverse that are very different from Mastodon. For not exactly few, it was a disturbing, if not outright traumatising experience to see that some Fediverse users can post over 500 characters at once. Or that some Fediverse users can easily "quote-toot" Mastodon toots, using something which is used on 𝕏 to harass members of marginalised minorities.

They didn't want that. They still don't want that. They want to make it go away again, so disturbing is it.

By and by, at least some Mastodon users face other differences between Mastodon on the one side and things like Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams) on the other side. For example, what the way these three handle conversations means in practice for users of Mastodon which doesn't have a concept of conversations. Or that Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams) users do not react when someone on Mastodon mentions them out of the blue. Everyone on Mastodon would notice it, so it's beyond a Mastodon user's comprehension that Friendica and Hubzilla users don't notice it by default.

So on the one hand, Mastodon users are increasingly stressed out by Friendica being Friendica and Hubzilla being Hubzilla. They ask themselves: "Why did they make everything so different from Mastodon? Why couldn't they have made it all just like Mastodon in the first place?"

It's incomprehensible to them that Friendica and Hubzilla were both made before Mastodon. For how can something in the Fediverse possible pre-date Eugen Rochko's invention of the Fediverse? It's also incomprehensible to them that something in the Fediverse can be something else than a Twitter clone. Or they simply don't know how Facebook, which Friendica aims to be an alternative to, works differently from Twitter as well.

On the other hand, Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams) users are increasingly stressed out by Mastodon users trying to force Mastodon's culture upon them, along with Mastodon's limitations. Not few Mastodon users try to make Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams) behave more like Mastodon by putting pressure on their users to a) always do everything the Mastodon way and b) stop making use of features that Mastodon doesn't have.

If you've never come across a Mastodon user complaining about a post or comment of yours being too long because you've exceeded the holy limit of 500 characters, then I'm very certain that you will.

Food for thought: This entire conflict would disappear with a split. Mastodon users would be spared from utterly non-Mastodon things. And non-Mastodon uers would be spared from demands to stop making use of 90% of all features they have at hand just because Mastodon doesn't have them.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #500Characters #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #QuotePostDebate #QuoteTootDebate

@Larry Garfield @Renaud Chaput In this case, the handling of long-form content should be configurable per account.

The settings could be:

• Render fully (default; what the devs of Hubzilla and (streams) want)
• Always link (what Mastodon does with Article-type objects)
• Link if title or subject is available, otherwise render fully
• Link if title or subject is available, otherwise block
• Block everything over 500 characters

Maybe there could be an additional setting for formatted content in general:

• Render fully (default)
• Render partially (the Mastodon 4 way right now)
• Remove all formatting (what Mastodon up until 3 did)
• Block

#Long #LongPost #LongPosts #LongPostMeta #CWLong #CWLongPost #CWLongPostMeta #500Characters #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Mastodon #Friendica #Hubzilla #TextFormatting #RichText

@Lunawawa :neofox_snug: :therian:

vanilla mastodon is somehow the only software that doesn't allow admins to adjust the character limit.

They can adjust the character limit. But it requires digging into the source code because the limit is hard-coded. Basically, if you as an admin want a higher character limit, you have to soft-fork Mastodon.

And whenever you upgrade your instance to a new version, it's force-rebased to vanilla, and you have to soft-fork it and apply your changes again.

Better yet: Changing the character limit by modifying the source code is, technically speaking, illegal. It would only be compliant with the GNU Affero General Public License if the admin uploaded the modified code to GitHub as a fork of vanilla Mastodon. But no Mastodon admin even only goes through the hassle of learning git just to have more characters.

CC: @Elena Brescacin

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AGPL #Mastodon #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #500Characters

@Spooky Panda Bear 🌈 Quick and easy solution:

Move away from Mastodon. Go someplace else in the Fediverse that doesn't have a 500-character limit.

Move to Pleroma (5,000 characters, configurable by admin).
Or Akkoma (5,000 characters, configurable by admin).
Or Misskey (3,000 characters, hard-coded).
Or one of the several Misskey forks (thousands of characters again, configurable by admin).
Or Friendica (unlimited characters).
Or Hubzilla (unlimited characters).
Or (streams) (unlimited characters; that is, the database can handle a bit over 65,000 characters on older instances with no database upgrade and over 24,000,000 characters otherwise).

All of them are in the Fediverse. The Fediverse is not only Mastodon. All of them are connected to Mastodon. Proof: This comment comes from Hubzilla.

And then do something that nobody on Mastodon would even come up with the idea to do:

Put the excerpt into the post.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #Pleroma #Akkoma #Misskey #Forkey #Forkeys #Firefish #Iceshrimp #Sharkey #Catodon #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #500Characters

@Potung Thul

If the idea is to work around limitations like not enough space for text, well, Mastodon is young enough that we should change the design specs rather than use it in an unintended way with unintended consequences.

If you regularly run out of characters due to the 500-character limit, the solution that works best right now is not to wait for Mastodon to remove that limitation on all instances. Of course, it isn't to put excess characters into the alt-text either.

It's rather to move to e.g. Akkoma or Iceshrimp or Sharkey or Friendica or so, anything in the Fediverse that offers way more characters on all instances so that you don't have to ask around which instance has more than 500 characters.

CC: @Mirre :mastocheck:

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #500Characters #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse

When you've just written a post or a comment.

When you discover it's over 500 characters.

When you start pondering how you could shorten it to appease Mastodon users.

And when you decide that it's much easier to add the #Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost filter-triggering hashtags and, if it's a post, a Mastodon-style long-post content warning in the summary.

#FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Hashtag #Hashtags #HashtagMeta #CWHashtagMeta #CharacterCount #500Characters

@BeAware :veriweed:

but honestly a lot of it just goes over my head past a certain point.

That's what I mean when I say I write about an extremely obscure niche topic, and I always have a lot to explain for people to get my images.

Unfortunately, the whole topic is probably so special-interest that I have to shove too much down people's throats to give them even only the basics. They might not understand the images either way.

But I do see your frustrations on things like post limits and alt text character limits and such.

It isn't so much the technology. It doesn't make much of a difference whether Mastodon cuts my 40,000-character image description off at the 1,500-character mark, or whether Hubzilla lets me read only the first 3,500 characters because there's only so much vertical space in my browser window.

The full description goes into the post text either way because it contains explanations that are necessary for people to understand the image, and people e.g. with a severe tremor who can't move a mouse steadily or with a head pointer that they poke around on a keyboard with can't read it when it's in the alt-text because they can't access alt-text.

And when it's in the post text, Mastodon won't cut it off at the 500-character mark and throw the excess 39,500 characters away. If anything, it rejects posts with over 100,000 characters altogether AFAIK.

I know that Pleroma and Akkoma reject posts over 50,000 characters, and I suspect Misskey and the Forkeys to reject even shorter posts. But nobody in my primary audience is on either of these.

The problem is rather the culture. It's a culture that's cultivated on Mastodon and on Mastodon only, that disregards the rest of the Fediverse and how it's different because nobody knows, but that is being forced upon that self-same rest of the Fediverse regardless. If your home instance is connected to Mastodon, you play by Mastodon's unofficial rules or else.

Sad, but true: The rules of one Mastodon instance don't apply to all connected Mastodon instances all the same. They apply to the local timeline, but not to the federated timeline. Other instances may have contradicting rules, and no instance admin is going to enforce rules that apply to other instances, but not their own one.

At the same time, however, Mastodon's overarching unwritten cultural rules do apply to the federated timeline because they apply to all Mastodon instances. And they're forced upon everything that isn't Mastodon all the same.

That's partly because Mastodon users don't even notice when something doesn't come from Mastodon, partly because some of those who do know that the Fediverse is more than Mastodon still believe that everything that isn't Mastodon is either an alternative UI for Mastodon with a couple extra features (Akkoma or Iceshrimp or Friendica is for the Web what Mona or Tusky is for the phone) or bolted onto Mastodon as an add-on otherwise, and it's partly because whoever is the biggest is the boss, and because Mastodon users tend to think Mastodon was there first.

Mastodon's culture includes not only a sufficient description for each image you post, but you're expected to put the full description into the alt-text and only into the alt-text. This comes from adequately describing images in the post text being technically impossible on vanilla Mastodon with only 500 characters minus the actual post text, minus hashtags, minus mentions, minus even content warning.

So for one, Mastodon users expect an image description in the alt-text. That's why I describe each image twice, once with a few hundred characters in the alt-text, once with thousands upon thousands of characters in the post text.

Besides, I expect Mastodon users to be highly irritated when they discover that I've put a detailed image description into the post text rather than into the alt-text where they expect it. Yes, there's an image description in the alt-text. But why is there a longer one in the post text? Why isn't the long one in the alt-text where it belongs by Mastodon's standards? Why do I refuse to do things like they're done on Mastodon?

Okay, so my full image description is too long for alt-text. But why don't I make it shorter then? Nobody on Mastodon writes image descriptions that are several thousand characters long. Why don't I write image descriptions like Mastodon users?

Also: While Mastodon is fully capable of importing and displaying posts that are tens of thousands of characters long, many many Mastodon users are very opposed to posts longer than 500 characters. They're technically possible, but they're culturally disliked and frowned upon. This mostly applies to those who use the official Mastodon app that can't fold long posts in and expand them if you want to read them, but it isn't limited to those users.

It's another cultural thing: Mastodon cannot post over 500 characters, so Mastodon users aren't used to over 500 characters, so nobody anywhere in the Fediverse must post over 500 characters. Mastodon users actually keep tooting that they want filters which remove everything over 500 characters from their timelines.

And not exactly rarely, they take matters into their own hands. If they spot a post with over 500 characters in their personal timeline, they block the poster upon first strike, but not necessarily without complaining to the user first. Some go as far as doing that when they see a post with over 500 characters in the federated timeline.

In fact, I expect entire Mastodon instances to have blocked non-Mastodon users instance-wide because some local user felt disturbed about their over-500-characters posts and asked the moderation to step in. There may even be instances, not even exactly small ones, that go as far as blocking the entire offending instance.

For these reasons, for me, posting images while having connections all over Mastodon is like treading on raw eggs. I spend 13 hours describing an image in 40,000 characters just to give a casual bystander audience a chance to understand them. I post that thing. A few people may find it helpful. To many, it makes no difference in practice because they don't read my image description. And then there's the unknown number of Mastodon users who take countermeasures or have countermeasures taken by admins/mods because my gargantuan image post disturbs them and/or goes against Mastodon's culture.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #MastodonCulture #500Characters #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits

@yianiris On Twitter, the character limit was justified. Early Twitter used SMS for tweets.

Mastodon, on the other hand, tries to be the better Twitter without being too different from Twitter.

And almost all newbies came here believing the Fediverse is only vanilla Mastodon with no more than 500 characters, so anything longer deeply disturbs many of them.

#FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #500Characters

@Panos Damelos (Catodon) :catodon: What's even worse is that just about everyone who joined the Fediverse in the last two years did so with the belief that the Fediverse is Mastodon, i.e. the Fediverse is nothing more than micro-blogging with a maximum of 500 characters.

Many more still believe so than you may think. And I'm not talking about total newbies, but even about second-wave Twitter refugees who came here right after Musk had bought the birdsite.

For others, the first encounter with an over-500-character post was not only completely unexpected, catching them entirely off-guard, but utterly shocking and disturbing.

Now they want their nice, friendly, cosy, fluffy, comfy Fediverse back that's only vanilla Mastodon.

A few actually want a total, absolute, Fediverse-wide ban on posts over 500 characters. Others are looking for technical means that block any and all posts with over 500 characters server-side, and I think they aren't limited to those still stuck on the official phone app that doesn't fold longer posts in because it was built not only against only Mastodon, but against Mastodon being the only Fediverse project.

As long as they don't get that, they complain and mute or out-right block anyone from whom they spot a post with over 500 characters in their federated timeline. And I guess they're so numerous after all that this behaviour cuts deep into the range of everyone who isn't on vanilla Mastodon.

This exactly is why I always add the hashtags #Long, #LongPost, #CWLong and #CWLongPost to everything that goes out of here that exceeds 500 characters. Raw count in a text editor, not fancy Mastodon way of counting. And if it's a post as opposed to a comment, I also add a Mastodon-style CW like "CW: long (5,204 characters)" although Hubzilla a) doesn't have Mastodon-style CWs in the summary field as part of its culture and b) has something much better instead.

Still, hardly anyone reads these posts.

It really seems like the only way to get my posts significant exposure on Mastodon is by actually staying below 500. Considering the amount of hashtags I need for my posts to both be discoverable and trigger filters, and considering that I didn't come from 140/280 characters to 500 characters, but I'm used to not having a character limit, it's a struggle. I often end up giving up, exceeding 500 characters and pulling all long post warning stops because that's easier for me.

It doesn't help that everyone who joins Mastodon believes that Eugen Rochko has invented the Fediverse. Bonus points for Rochko having invented both Mastodon and the Fediverse in 2022 as a reaction upon Musk's announcement to buy out Twitter. If they haven't heard of it any earlier, it probably hasn't existed any earlier.

When they're wondering what kind of witchcraft you're pulling off with your impossibly long post, not to mention stuff like bold type or italics or a bullet-point list, and you've managed to get into their heads that you are, in fact, not on Mastodon, they still think that whatever you're on was bolted onto Mastodon by someone.

Even if you manage to convince them that, no, what you're using is being developed entirely independently from Mastodon, they still think it was made after Mastodon. And they wonder why it deviates so much from Mastodon instead of mimicking it. Or why it exists at all if there's already Mastodon.

However, this also means that they see everything in the Fediverse that isn't Mastodon as an intruder in Mastodon's Fediverse because, of course, Mastodon was here first. And everything that isn't Mastodon has to conform to Mastodon's unwritten rules and adopt Mastodon's culture. In fact, if something isn't Mastodon, it isn't allowed to have its own culture if that culture differs from Mastodon's.

This also means that nothing that isn't Mastodon is allowed to make use of any features that Mastodon itself doesn't have because they disturb some Mastodonians.

Of course, at this point, you could and actually should tell them the truth.

Rochko did, in fact, not invent the Fediverse. Because when Mastodon was launched, the Fediverse had already existed for about eight years. Without Rochko's doing.

When Mastodon was launched, it immediately connected itself to StatusNet, Friendica, Hubzilla and Pleroma. The last three of these are actually still around, still part of the Fediverse, and Mastodon is still connected to them.

So, you should ask them, why do you think Friendica would accept to throw six years more worth of culture than Mastodon has and 80% of its features out of the window and start behaving like a Mastodon clone?

If they don't block you on the spot for not unconditionally surrendering to the new Mastodon overlords, you could try to compare the pre-Mastodon Fediverse projects to Native Americans and Mastodon to white European colonists.

Oh, and by the way: Before Mastodon, character limits in general were an exception rather than the standard, especially if Diaspora* is taken into account.

#FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #NotOnlyMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #FediverseIsNotMastodon #CharacterCount #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #500Characters

@Adrian Roselli

Anyway, that is a scenario where an accompanying web page might be a better text alternative.

Or, if you aren't restricted to only 500 characters, a more extensive image description in the post text body. It'd have the advantage that the image and the description are still in the same place.

Don't forget that just about everything in the Fediverse that's *blogging without being Mastodon (or Threads) allows for thousands of characters.

CC: @Alt Text Hall of Fame

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #500Characters

@Gazeshift You won't be able to get that on mastodon.social.

Either you try to find a Mastodon instance that has a raised character limit. However, there's no list of Mastodon instances with character limits.

Or you move to something that's part of the Fediverse, fully federated with Mastodon, but not Mastodon proper, such as:

• Pleroma (5,000 characters by default)
• Akkoma (5,000 characters by default)
• Misskey (3,000 characters hard-coded, feels very Japanese)
• forks of Misskey like Sharkey or Iceshrimp (thousands of characters by default)
• Friendica (unlimited characters, handles nothing like Mastodon)
• Hubzilla (unlimited characters, handles absolutely nothing like Mastodon, doesn't work with Mastodon apps; this is where I am)
• the Streams repository (unlimited characters, handles absolutely nothing like Mastodon, doesn't work with Mastodon apps, public instances are few and hard to find)

They're all guaranteed to always give you many many more characters than vanilla Mastodon plus stuff like quotes, quote-posts and text formatting on top. But you'll have to get used to a wholly different UI and UX.

#Long #LongPost #LongPosts #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Mastodon #NotOnlyMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #FediverseIsNotMastodon #Pleroma #Akkoma #Misskey #Forkey #Forkeys #Sharkey #Iceshrimp #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #500Characters