mstdn.social is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
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@Chris ABRAHAM Do you absolutely depend on being on Mastodon (as opposed of the rest of the Fediverse)?

Because there is Fediverse server software (as in federated with Mastodon, as in you can follow Mastodon users from there, and Mastodon users can follow you when you're there) that offers way more than 500 characters. It may also offer other features which you may want Mastodon to have, or which are even completely unimaginable from the point of view of someone who knows the Fediverse as only Mastodon. Some examples:

  • Misskey: 3,000 characters, hard-coded
  • Misskey forks (Iceshrimp, Sharkey etc.): thousands of characters, configurable by admin
  • Pleroma, Akkoma: 5,000 characters, configurable by admin
  • Friendica: 200,000 characters, probably hard-coded
  • Hubzilla: 16,777,215 characters, database field size limit (this is where I'm replying to you from right now)
  • (streams), Forte: over 24 million characters

CC: @Stefan Bohacek

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Pleroma #Akkoma #Misskey #Forkey #Forkeys #Iceshrimp #Sharkey #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits
hub.netzgemeinde.euNetzgemeinde/Hubzilla
Replied in thread
Are you referring to my mentions being @Erik :heart_agender: and @Roknrol rather than what you're used to, namely @⁠bright_helpings and @⁠roknrol? Using the long name rather than the short name and keeping the @ outside the link rather than making it part of the link? Likewise, the # being outside the hashtag link rather than being part of it?

This is because I'm not on Mastodon. The Fediverse is not only Mastodon. It has never been. So this is not a toot.

No, really. This is what I post from: https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/channel/jupiter_rowland, https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/profile/jupiter_rowland. I ask you: Does this look like Mastodon? Have you ever seen Mastodon look like this?

Where I am, this style of mentions and hashtags is hard-coded. And it has been since long before Mastodon was even an idea.

I'm on something named Hubzilla. Hubzilla is not a Mastodon instance. Hubzilla is not a Mastodon fork either. Hubzilla has got absolutely nothing to do with Mastodon at all.

It is its very own project, fully independent from Mastodon (https://hubzilla.org, https://framagit.org/hubzilla, https://joinfediverse.wiki/Hubzilla).

Hubzilla has not intruded into "the Mastodon Fediverse" either. The Fediverse is older than Mastodon. And Hubzilla was there before Mastodon.

Hubzilla was launched by @Mike Macgirvin ?️ in March, 2015, eight months before Mastodon, by renaming and redesigning his own Red Matrix from 2012, almost four years before Mastodon. And the Red Matrix was a fork of a fork of his own Friendica, which was launched on July 2nd, 2010, 15 years ago, five and a half years before Mastodon. (https://en.wikipedia.org/Friendica, https://friendi.ca, https://github.com/friendica, https://joinfediverse.wiki/Friendica)

Friendica was there before Mastodon, too.

Here's the official Friendica/Hubzilla timeline on Hubzilla's official website to show you that I'm not making anything up: https://hubzilla.org/page/info/timeline. Scroll all the way down and notice all the features that you may right now know for a fact that the Fediverse doesn't have, but that Friendica has introduced to the Fediverse 15 years ago, five and a half years before Mastodon was launched.

Again, Mastodon has never been its own network. The Fediverse has never been only Mastodon. When Mastodon was launched in January, 2016, it immediately federated with

Friendica has been formatting mentions and hashtags the way I just did for 15 years now. When Mastodon was launched, Friendica has been formatting them that way for five and a half years already, and Hubzilla has done so for ten months. It is hard-coded there. It is not a user option.

That's because not everything in the Fediverse is a Twitter clone or Twitter alternative. [b]Friendica was designed as a Facebook alternative with full-blown long-form blogging capability. And Hubzilla adds even more stuff to this. This is why Friendica and Hubzilla don't mimic Twitter.

Another shocking fact: As you can clearly see here, Friendica and Hubzilla don't have Mastodon's 500-character limit. Friendica's character limit is 200,000. Hubzilla's character limit is 16,777,215, the maximum length of the database field. And it's deeply engrained in their culture, which is many years older than Mastodon's culture, to not worry about the length of a post exceeding 500 characters.

One more shocking fact: Friendica has had quote-posts since its very beginning. So has Hubzilla. Both have always been able to quote-post any public Mastodon toot, and they will forever remain able to quote-post any public Mastodon toot. And Mastodon will never be able to do anything against it. (By the way: In 15 years of Friendica, nobody has ever used quote-posts for dogpiling or harassment purposes. Neither Friendica nor Hubzilla is Twitter.)

You find this disturbing? You think none of this should exist in the Fediverse, even though all this has been in the Fediverse for longer than Mastodon?

Then go ahead and block all instances of Friendica and Hubzilla as well as all instances of Mike's later creations, (streams) (https://codeberg.org/streams/streams) from 2021 and Forte (https://codeberg.org/fortified/forte) from 2024.

Or you could go ask @Seirdy / DM me the word "bread" and @Garden Fence Blocklist as well as @Mad Villain of @The Bad Space to add every last instance on any of these lists to their blocklists for being "rampantly and unabashedly ableist and xenophobic by design" due to not being and acting and working like Mastodon and just as rampantly and unabashedly refusing to fully adopt and adapt to the Mastodon-centric "Fediverse culture" as defined by fresh Twitter refugees on Mastodon in mid-2022 as well as refusing to abandon their own culture which is disturbingly incompatible with Mastodon's. Essentially try and have four entire Fediverse server applications Fediblocked once and for all because they're so disturbing from a "Fediverse equals Mastodon" point of view.

Or you could go to Mastodon's GitHub repository (https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon), submit a feature request for defederating Mastodon from everything that isn't Mastodon by design and then go lobbying for support for your feature request.

As for why I have so many hashtags below my comments, here is what they mean. Many of them are meant to trigger filters, including such that automatically hide posts behind content warning buttons, a feature that Mastodon has had since October, 2022, that Friendica has had since July, 2010, and that Hubzilla has had since March, 2015.

  • #Long, #LongPost = This post is over 500 characters long. Create a filter for either or both of these hashtags if you don't want to see my or anyone else's long posts.
  • #CWLong, #CWLongPost = CW: long post (over 500 characters long). Create a filter for either or both of these hashtags if you don't want to see my or anyone else's long posts.
  • #FediMeta, #FediverseMeta = This post talks about the Fediverse. Create a filter for either or both of these hashtags if you don't want to see me or anyone talk about the Fediverse.
  • #CWFediMeta, #CWFediverseMeta = CW: Fediverse meta. Or: CW: Fediverse meta, Fediverse-beyond-Mastodon meta. Or: CW: Fediverse meta, non-Mastodon Fediverse meta. Create a filter for either or both of these hashtags if you don't want to see me or anyone talk about the Fediverse.
  • #NotOnlyMastodon, #FediverseIsNotMastodon, #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse: This post talks about the Fediverse not only being Mastodon. Create a filter for either or multiple or all of these hashtags if you don't want to see me or anyone else talk about the Fediverse being more than Mastodon. Otherwise, click or tap any of these hashtags to read more about it in your Fediverse app.
  • #Friendica: This post talks about the Facebook alternative in the Fediverse named Friendica. Create a filter for it if you don't want to see me or anyone else talk about Friendica. Otherwise, click or tap it to read more about it in your Fediverse app. It is also meant for post discovery.
  • #Hubzilla: This post talks about the Swiss army knif of the Fediverse named Hubzilla. Create a filter for it if you don't want to see me or anyone else talk about Hubzilla. Otherwise, click or tap it to read more about it in your Fediverse app. It is also meant for post discovery.
  • #Streams, #(streams): This post talks about the Facebook alternative in the Fediverse commonly referred to as (streams). Create a filter for either or both of them if you don't want to see me or anyone else talk about Friendica. Otherwise, click or tap either of them to read more about it in your Fediverse app. It is also meant for post discovery.
  • #Forte: This post talks about the Facebook alternative in the Fediverse named Forte. Create a filter for it if you don't want to see me or anyone else talk about Forte. Otherwise, click or tap it to read more about it in your Fediverse app. It is also meant for post discovery.
  • #AltText = This post talks about alt-text and/or contains an image with alt-text. It is primarily meant for post discovery.
  • #AltTextMeta = This post talks about alt-text. Create a filter for this hashtag if you don't want to see me or anyone else talk about alt-text.
  • #CWAltTextMeta = CW: alt-text meta. Create a filter for this hashtag if you don't want to see me or anyone else talk about alt-text.
  • #ImageDescription = This post talks about image descriptions and/or contains an image with an image description. It is primarily meant for post discovery.
  • #ImageDescriptions, #ImageDescriptionMeta = This post talks about image descriptions. Create a filter for either of these hashtags if you don't want to see me or anyone else talk about image descriptions.
  • #CWImageDescriptionMeta = CW: image description meta. Create a filter for this hashtag if you don't want to see me or anyone else talk about image descriptions.
  • #Hashtag, #Hashtags, #HashtagMeta = This post talks about hashtags. Create a filter for either of these hashtags if you don't want to see me or anyone else talk about hashtags.
  • #CWHashtagMeta = CW: hashtag meta. Create a filter for this hashtag if you don't want to see me or anyone else talk about hashtags.
  • #CharacterLimit, #CharacterLimits = This post is talking about character limits. It is primarily meant for post discovery. But if you don't want to see me or anyone else talk about character limits, create a filter for any of these hashtags.
  • #QuotePost, #QuoteTweet, #QuoteToot, #QuoteBoost = This post talks about quote-posts and/or contains a quote-post. If this disturbs you, create a filter for any of these hashtags.
  • #QuotePosts, #QuoteTweets, #QuoteToots, #QuoteBoosts, #QuotedShares = This post talks about quote-posts. Create a filter for either of these hashtags if you don't want to see me or anyone else talk about quote-posts.
  • #QuotePostDebate, #QuoteTootDebate = This post talks about quote-posts. Create a filter for either of these hashtags if you don't want to see me or anyone else talk about quote-posts.
  • #FediblockMeta = This post is talking about fediblocks. It is primarily meant for post discovery.

Lastly: Having all hashtags in one line at the very end of a post that only contains hashtags is the preferred way in the Fediverse. For one, hashtags in their own line at the end of the post irritate screen reader users much less than hashtags in the middle of the text. It's actually hashtags in the middle of the text that are ableist. Besides, Mastodon is explicitly designed to have a separate hashtag line at the end of the post.
hub.netzgemeinde.euJupiter RowlandAn avatar roaming the decentralised and federated 3-D virtual worlds based on OpenSimulator, a free and open-source server-side re-implementation of Second Life. Mostly talking about OpenSim, sometimes about other virtual worlds, occasionally about the Fediverse beyond Mastodon. No, the Fediverse is not only Mastodon. If you're looking for real-life people posting about real-life topics, go look somewhere else. This channel is never about real life. Even if you see me on Mastodon, I'm not on Mastodon myself. I'm on [url=https://hubzilla.org]Hubzilla[/url] which is neither a Mastodon instance nor a Mastodon fork. In fact, it's older and much more powerful than Mastodon. And it has always been connected to Mastodon. I regularly write posts with way more than 500 characters. If that disturbs you, block me now, but don't complain. I'm not on Mastodon, I don't have a character limit here. I rather give too many content warnings than too few. But I have absolutely no means of blanking out pictures for Mastodon users. I always describe my images, no matter how long it takes. My posts with image descriptions tend to be my longest. Don't go looking for my image descriptions in the alt-text; they're always in the post text which is always hidden behind a content warning due to being over 500 characters long. If you follow me, and I "follow" you back, I don't actually follow you and receive your posts. Unless you've got something to say that's interesting to me within the scope of this channel, or I know you from OpenSim, I'll most likely deny you the permission to send me your posts. I only "follow" you back because Hubzilla requires me to do that to allow you to follow me. But I do let you send me your comments and direct messages. If you boost a lot of uninteresting stuff, I'll block you boosts. My "birthday" isn't my actual birthday but my rezday. My first avatar has been around since that day. If you happen to know German, maybe my "homepage" is something for you, a blog which, much like this channel, is about OpenSim and generally virtual worlds. #[zrl=https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/search?tag=OpenSim]OpenSim[/zrl] #[zrl=https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/search?tag=OpenSimulator]OpenSimulator[/zrl] #[zrl=https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/search?tag=VirtualWorlds]VirtualWorlds[/zrl] #[zrl=https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/search?tag=Metaverse]Metaverse[/zrl] #[zrl=https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/search?tag=SocialVR]SocialVR[/zrl] #[zrl=https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/search?tag=fedi22]fedi22[/zrl]
Replied in thread
@vulgalour First of all, "image description" and "alt-text" don't mean the same thing.

Alt-text is what's added directly to the image. It's what screen readers used by blind or visually-impaired people read out loud as they can't "read out loud" an image. It's what people see instead of the image if the image doesn't show for them (text-based client, too slow Internet connection, whatever).

Alt-text should never convey more information than the image which it is a replacement for.

An image description that goes into the post itself is not alt-text.

I don't see any rule or part of the "Fediquette" or "Mastodon culture" that speaks against adding that additional information to a reply.

Whether it works or not depends on whether your customers accept it or not. I guess that 99% of your aspiring customers in the Fediverse will be on Mastodon, only see your start post and not be bothered to check the replies. So my suggestion is to leave room in the original post for tellling your customers that prices can be found in a reply to that post.

But seeing as this will happen to you a lot, it may be worth looking for someplace that offers you more than 500 characters:
  • a Mastodon instance with a raised character limit
  • Pleroma (5,000 characters by default, configurable by the admin)
  • Akkoma (5,000 characters by default, configurable by the admin)
  • Misskey (3,000 characters, hard-coded; just steer clear of misskey.io)
  • the various forks of Misskey and forks of their forks like Iceshrimp or Sharkey (thousands of characters by default, configurable by the admin)

If you need a five-digit character count, the best you can do requires basically re-learning the Fediverse, mastering a significantly steeper learning curve and very likely abandoning dedicated apps. Here we're talking about Mike Macgirvin's creations from Friendica (200,000 characters) to Hubzilla (probably even higher) to (streams) and Forte (over 24,000,000 characters).

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Pleroma #Akkoma #Misskey #Forkey #Forkeys #Iceshrimp #Sharkey #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta
hub.netzgemeinde.euNetzgemeinde/Hubzilla
Replied in thread
@Monstreline @qurly(not curly)joe @Claire (sometimes Carla) One thing you could do is search mastodon.social for the #AltText hashtag which many put on their posts with alt-text. Also, search mastodon.social for the #AltTextHallOfFame hashtag and follow @Alt Text Hall of Fame.

However, I'm not sure if that will lead to the desired outcome. Checking Mastodon users' alt-texts and the reactions upon these was part of what led myself to what one may argue is "overthinking" image descriptions for the Fediverse. In fact, I ended up describing all my original images twice, including with a long image description in the post itself. And I'm constantly upping my game, improving my style and declaring old image descriptions obsolete because I keep learning new things and trying new things.

Granted, you may not be inspired to go as far as I did, seeing as you've got 500 characters in posts whereas I have hundreds of thousands or even millions. But still, chances are that analysing other people's alt-texts may have you overthink image descriptions even more rather than less.

For reference, here are my latest original image posts in reverse chronological order (the older, the more obsolete):
In each case, the post including image(s) is hidden behind a summary and content warning. In the first post, the images themselves are additionally hidden behind a spoiler tag as an extra safety measure due to their potentially sensitive content.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta
Mastodon hosted on mastodon.socialMastodonThe original server operated by the Mastodon gGmbH non-profit
Replied in thread
@qurly(not curly)joe @jz.tusk If you have a lot to describe, and/or if you need to explain your image, the best you can do is to give two descriptions for the same image.

A "short", purely visual description in the alt-text, also to satisfy the alt-text police and the Mastodon HOA who demand there be an alt-text for all images, no matter what.

And a long, detailed description that includes all explanations, and that goes into the post.

Yes, it will exceed 500 characters. But if you regularly have to describe that much, it's best to move someplace with a much higher character limit. Spreading a long description across multiple Mastodon toots can only be a short-term kluge.

Misskey offers you hard-coded 3,000 characters. All its forks have configurable character limits which tend to be higher. Akkoma offers you at least 5,000 characters. Friendica offers you 200,000 characters, but adding alt-text isn't as straight-forward as on Mastodon.

The limit I have here on Hubzilla is even higher; I don't know how high it is, but it doesn't really matter because AFAIK Mastodon rejects all posts from outside with over 100,000 characters.

But I don't post images here anymore because Hubzilla cannot make Mastodon blank out sensitive images. I have two channels for images on (streams) now which can make Mastodon hide images, @Jupiter Rowland's (streams) outlet and @Jupiter's Fedi-Memes on (streams). (streams) has a fixed character limit of over 24,000,000 that's defined by database field size.

That is, I rarely post images nowadays. Explaining my Fediverse memes is tedious enough already. But properly describing and explaining my original virtual world images so that everyone gets them takes up so much time and energy (one image post always takes up several hours, and I touch-type on a hardware keyboard) that there are practically always months between two image posts.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Misskey #Forkey #Forkeys #Akkoma #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta
hub.netzgemeinde.euNetzgemeinde/Hubzilla
Replied in thread
@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
hub.netzgemeinde.euNetzgemeinde/Hubzilla
@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
hub.netzgemeinde.euNetzgemeinde/Hubzilla
Replied in thread
@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
hub.netzgemeinde.euNetzgemeinde/Hubzilla
Replied in thread
Now let's assume I describe the image twice. Once in a long, detailed description that goes into the post instead of the alt-text (I don't have a 500-character limit; I don't have a limit at all). And then once again and purely visually in the alt-text because Mastodon users demand there be an image description in the alt-text.

(3/9)

#AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits
hub.netzgemeinde.euNetzgemeinde/Hubzilla
Replied in thread
@Kagan MacTane (he/him) Then I have a question.

Warning ahead: This will be a little long. But I've cut it up in chunks of under 500 characters for your convenience because experience has shown me that many Mastodon users completely ignore anything over 500 characters.

(1/9)

#AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits
hub.netzgemeinde.euNetzgemeinde/Hubzilla
Replied in thread
@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
hub.netzgemeinde.euNetzgemeinde/Hubzilla
@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
hub.netzgemeinde.euNetzgemeinde/Hubzilla

Enough with this twitter wannabe rules or 500 characters limit to posts That was a ridiculous rule by ridiculous social media that want to limit expression

You can't express ANY idea in 500characters unless it is "common sense"

It is ridiculous to hide behind tech excuses when you allow attachment of binaries to a short text message, bandwidth for the sake of bandwidth

TEXT TEXT TEXT TEXT TEXT TEXT TEXT TEXT TEXT TEXT 500 lim

Replied in thread
@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
hub.netzgemeinde.euNetzgemeinde/Hubzilla
Replied in thread
@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
joinfediverse.wikiWhat is Pleroma? - Join the Fediverse

Surprisingly for many of you, there are indeed people on Mastodon who have a problem with long posts over 500 characters; CW: long post (over 900 characters, over 1,200 in Mastodon count), quote-post, 19 hashtags (including 13 to trigger filters), Fediverse meta, non-Mastodon Fediverse meta, character count meta, character limit meta, over-500-characters meta, sarcasm

Replied in thread
@phanisvara (streams) Yes, but many Mastodon users can't stand to see posts with over 500 characters. Not only do they refuse to read "long" posts, but some actually block anyone who exceeds 500 characters in a post even only once.

I'm pretty sure some ask their Mastodon instance admins to deal with such people. Have them blocked instance-wide. Have their whole Hubzilla hub blocked on that Mastodon instance.

Or they try to use Mastodon's report feature to report that Hubzilla user to the admin of that Hubzilla hub, or they have their admin try and get into contact with the admin of that Hubzilla hub, just to have that Hubzilla user sanctioned for breaking some unwritten Mastodon etiquette by posting over 500 characters in one chunk.

Of course, they fail in both cases. Hubzilla doesn't support Mastodon's report feature, and mentioning Hubzilla users, in this case the admin, in a public post won't work either. Verdict: That Hubzilla hub is unmoderated and therefore has to be blocked or even out-right Fediblocked.

On the grounds of the assumption that Hubzilla works exactly like Mastodon. Which I'm trying to debunk with this series of posts.

As at least one of my polls has revealed, there seems to be a not insignificant number of Mastodon users who demand posts with over 500 characters be banned absolutely everywhere in the Fediverse. Including in conversation between users on other projects, regardless of whether overly long posts from that conversation might leak into Mastodon or not.

And, of course, there's the Mastodon police that try to urge non-Mastodon users to limit their posts to a maximum of 500 characters, regardless of whether they're aware that the user in question is on something else than Mastodon or not. They're fully convinced that Mastodon was here first, and all the other projects are intruders in Mastodon's Fediverse and have to follow Mastodon's rules.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CharacterCount #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #500Characters #Mastodon
hub.netzgemeinde.euNetzgemeinde/Hubzilla