@Mastodon Migration

Basically telling other people how they should be using Mastodon is not cool unless they are violating some instance rule.

As, by the way, is telling Fediverse users who are not on Mastodon to use whatever they use instead like Mastodon users are expected to use Mastodon.

Please don't be a Mastodon HOA enforcer.

Especially since the alt-text police of the Mastodon HOA have much higher alt-text and image description minimum standards than blind or visually-impaired people. And they seem to be raising their standards further and further.

I always try my best to be way ahead of anyone's image description minimum standards, also in order to demonstrate to the Mastodon HOA that I'm not a lazy bum, and that I do try hard to describe my images properly. For my own original images, this means that I have to describe each one of them twice, with a fairly short description in the alt-text and a much longer one in the post itself.

This, however, clashes with the Mastodon HOA, too, because they also enforce Mastodon's default 500-character limit Fediverse-wide by generously blocking everyone whom they catch exceeding it at first strike.

CC: @🅰🅻🅸🅲🅴 (🌈🦄)

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

There's a difference between posting a Toot asking people to do something, and a direct reply to someone to tell them.

What I particularly detest is:
* A posts a Toot
* B replies
* A valiant Shite in Whining Armour, C, comes galloping in on their Mighty Steed and starts defending A against the Horrible Thing B must have had the Unmitigated Audacity to say as A, a Frail little Blossom, will surely take Offence and surely won't be able to defend themselves.

@JoscelynTransient
I have written alt text as my reply to posts lacking alt text.

So far, no negative responses from the original poster, and several positive responses.

@JoscelynTransient

> the feddy

Now I can think of nothing other than Feddy Mercury

@alice @altbot

@benroyce it’s already allergy season, so I may be wrong, but this smells a bit like respectability politics in the context of disability. Is anybody “entitled” to level access or ramps instead of stairs? What does the word “entitled” mean in that context?

This is absolutely a topic that involves conflicting access needs, between blind people and those with few spoons for writing alt text for whatever reason. That’s where encouraging the Alt4Me hashtag makes a lot of sense, but there’s also the question of whether anybody is “entitled” to post images, video or audio.

@OddDev I like the feature suggestion, but I'd suggest a few restrictions on alt-text submissions so trolls don't use it as an invisible way to spam users with horrible messages.

1. Image must be missing alt-text to get proposal
2. Only one proposal per account
3. No proposals from accounts/servers you have blocked or limited.

@altbot

@nilz

Hey @altbot can you describe this image for me? 🩷

@nilz I think Nilz makes a good point. I bet a lot of people are like that guy in the green shirt in that clip, sleeping through a conversation without paying attention and then clapping along enthusiastically when the applause starts. But that's okay, better than completely ignoring it, I guess.

*which is, of course, an example of what I was hinting at in another reply 🤪

@Jourei

At least once have I just not posted something because describing the image in any meaningful way would've been quite a task.
Though nowadays I'll post it anyway, perhaps I should call in helpers in those cases in the future.

I could post lots of pictures that I've made myself, maybe several a week. Instead, I haven't posted any since mid-2024.

I, too, refuse to post any image that doesn't have descriptions (two of them for each one of my original images) which are up to my own constantly rising standards. But these standards mean that even a fairly simple image may require several hours to one or two days to describe and explain.

In fact, I have been working on the descriptions of a series of avatar portraits for about a year and a half. So far, only the common preamble for four images and the individual long description for one of them are written. Distilling an optimal alt-text from them will be difficult because recent discoveries had me lower my personal alt-text character limit from 1,500 to 512, and I haven't even managed to put one together that doesn't exceed 1,500 characters.

And that's for avatar portraits with a neutral white background. Imagine the effort necessary for a landscape or a cityscape or something like that. So much about it being done in 10 seconds.

I recall finding a beautifully built, highly detailed harbour scene. It didn't even have anything in it that'd trigger anyone, I guess, so I deemed it safe enough to post. But I found it outright impossible to properly describe within a reasonable amount of time and with a reasonable effort. I ended up choosing a much different scene that still ended up taking me two full days to describe in the long description plus the morning of the third day to write an alt-text.

To be honest, I avoid having certain elements in my pictures now, such as vehicles and buildings unless they're very simple.

CC: @🅰🅻🅸🅲🅴 (🌈🦄)

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

@jupiter_rowland

i always alt text but i never write novels

"a skiff on choppy waters with dark clouds in the distance"

it's fine

if you're going to hold yourself to the standard of transmitting the transcendental of an image, i think you're going too hard on yourself

the issue before us is accessibility. that's a fine and noble goal. more lofty goals may be pursued by some, and that's going above and beyond and is laudatory

but it's nothing that can be called a standard of behavior

@benroyce @jupiter_rowland Depends on the image. Sometimes it's a known meme so I just say, e.g. "the well known ALL THE THINGS meme with the caption ...". Or if it's just an image "a sunrise off the Eastern Irish coast. The sky is ...."

But if it's one of my cats I can wax lyrical.

Sorry, I probably misunderstood you. I thought you were putting down a clear rule to never, ever hit the boost button on a post without alt-text, or one is a super horrible bad person nobody ever should be 100 kilometers within. That is going too far for me; instead, I would weigh the factors:

- Is it worth boosting _despite_ lacking alt text?
- Is the image even important to the message?
- Will I respond anyway (in which case I can e.g. put sufficient text to explain the image while at it).

So basically I do not think this should be a cold hard rule like the others in your list seem to be. Can we maybe agree that you actually meant all those more in the sense of RFC 2119:

3. SHOULD This word, or the adjective "RECOMMENDED", mean that there
may exist valid reasons in particular circumstances to ignore a
particular item, but the full implications must be understood and
carefully weighed before choosing a different course.

In that case, of course, my entire objection is moot.