Find the latitude of any place.  

Badlands I Utah by mcalma68


And I know for a fact that at least in some cases, quote posts are really just regular links to posts styled to look like quotes, so they don't really have all the expected functionality (at least in some apps, not sure about specific platforms).

That's the *key way. If it starts with "RE:", and an URL to a Fediverse message follows, it's automatically rendered as a quote-post.
Friendica and descendants do quote-posts as dumb copies, but with links to both the original poster who is notified and to the original post.
Whether Mastodon really wants to use an established and not too obscure standard remains to be seen. But if they do, it could be because they're pressured into using that standard by Threads.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CWFedisplaining #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares Add your location to a Google Map
Also worth mentioning that quote boosts, which have also recently received funding, will include work on privacy and safety features around them, possibly extending to other areas of the online experience.

These "privacy and safety features" are non-sense.
They're proprietary, they're non-standard, they're Mastodon-specific. And they are expected to work only by respecting a proprietary, non-standard, Mastodon-specific quote-post permission flag which probably won't even be documented anywhere except Mastodon's server code.
The opt-out feature will only work within a 100% Mastodon bubble and even that only if no non-Mastodon user finds content from within this bubble by searching mastodon.social for hashtags.
Mastodon is selling its whole quote-post feature as a total revolution, as the very introduction of quote-posts to the Fediverse. And it will work. I've once run . 71% of all voters thought the Fediverse does not have quote-posts right now. And that was in my bubble which, in comparison to Mastodon in general, is fairly Fediverse-savvy and full of non-Mastodon users.
But as a matter of fact, the Fediverse does have quote-posts right now! Almost everything that can do microblogging in a way has quote-posts.
Pleroma has quote-posts.
Akkoma has quote-posts.
Misskey has quote-posts.
Firefish has quote-posts.
Iceshrimp has quote-posts.
Iceshrimp.NET has quote-posts.
Sharkey has quote-posts.
Catodon has quote-posts.
Friendica has quote-posts.
Hubzilla has quote-posts.
(streams) has quote-posts.
And so forth.
They haven't introduced quote-posts to spite Mastodon. Some of them have had quote-posts since before Mastodon even existed. Friendica, for example, was created with quote-posts available, and that was five and a half years before Mastodon was created. For as long as Mastodon has existed, Friendica could quote-post Mastodon toots. And so could Hubzilla, created ten months before Mastodon.
In fact, all of the above can quote-post any Mastodon toot right now, with no problems, with zero resistance.
Guess what'll change when Mastodon introduces quote-posts plus the opt-in switch.
Well, Mastodon will be able to quote-post. Mastodon might be able to display quote-posts from outside properly, but probably not because it's ignoring that the rest of the Fediverse can quote-post.
But the rest of the Fediverse will still be able to quote-post just about all Mastodon toots. With no problems. With zero resistance. Even with the opt-in switched to off.
Because that switch is proprietary, non-standard and Mastodon-specific. Because only Mastodon even supports it.
This switch will cause many many more Mastodon users to learn the hard way that the Fediverse is more than Mastodon. Namely by encountering a post or comment from something that does not behave like Mastodon. And many many more Mastodon users will shit bricks in sheer terror upon this revelation.
If Mastodon really wanted this switch to be 100% waterproof, it would have to implement the feature request in its entirety. That includes defederation from all Fediverse instances that don't respect the opt-in switch.
Mind you, the defederation clause and the entire feature request came from someone in the firm belief that the Fediverse is Mastodon, only Mastodon and nothing but Mastodon. Just like about every other Mastodon user out there. So it was only targetted at rogue Mastodon instances with hacked source code.
In reality, however, it would require entire non-Mastodon Fediverse projects to be Fediblocked because they can quote-post without respecting Mastodon's quote-post opt-in switch.
All instances of Pleroma, of Akkoma, of Misskey, of Firefish, of Iceshrimp including Iceshrimp.NET, of Sharkey, of Catodon, of Friendica, of Hubzilla, of (streams) and so forth would have to be Fediblocked because they can quote-post without respecting Mastodon's quote-post opt-in switch. Every last one of them.
Mastodon's quote-post feature will either cause a rift through the Fediverse if this rule is put into action or even more people to shit bricks in terror and escape to Bluesky if it isn't.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Fedisplaining #CWFedisplaining #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #QuotePostDebate #QuoteTootDebate #Pleroma #Akkoma #Misskey #Forkey #Forkeys #Firefish #Iceshrimp #Iceshrimp.NET #Sharkey #Catodon #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #FediblockMeta
1) what are streams / what do they do

(streams) is a fork of a fork of three forks of a fork (of a fork) of Hubzilla. Everything in this line of forks is/was made by Mike.
It's basically Hubzilla based on a more advanced protocol (Nomad, which would actually be Zot12, instead of Zot6), minus articles, minus webpages, minus wikis, minus multiple profiles per channel, minus all connections except Nomad, Zot6, ActivityPub and its own Atom feeds, minus a frontend for the CalDAV server, minus a few other features, but with ActivityPub included into the core and not disturbing nomadic identity as much, with first steps taken towards nomadic identity via ActivityPub (which, unfortunately, seems to have caused some bugs), with a somewhat improved UI, with a new UI theme, and with the permissions system reworked.
2) are you saying the future of Hubzilla is uncertain / in peril

(streams)' future is uncertain.
Hubzilla was handed over to the community in 2018. Ever since then, it has been maintained by Mario Vavti with some help mostly from Harald Eilertsen. It also has a lot more users than (streams).
(streams)' current problem is that it has no-one like Mario amongst its few dozen users. One of them has the ambition and may have the time, but he's so little of a developer that he has only just recently taught himself git to a) fork the streams repository and b) make his own branch based on a commit before the first preparations for nomadic identity via ActivityPub went into release. One or two more are apparently more skilled, but they don't have enough time.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) I can agree with all three points.
The first one is particularly important when using my preferred Fediverse software, Hubzilla and (streams), as well as Friendica. Unlike Mastodon, all three aren't monoliths they're rather modular with lots of add-ons that are delivered with the server installation, but that can be activated or deactivated by the admin. Not all instances have all features activated.
So if you don't have a feature at hand that someone promised you to have in Friendica/Hubzilla/(streams) in general, it wasn't necessarily a lie or lack of knowledge on that someone's side. It may rather be a case of the admin having deactivated that feature or not activated it in the first place.
The third point applies to (streams), too. Those of us who really know it saw it as the future of the Fediverse, at least ideally. But on August 31st, Mike Macgirvin threw in the towel and largely retired from Fediverse development altogether, leaving the streams repository to the community and unclear what'd happen to his few-weeks-old fork Forte.
It wasn't the first time that Mike has handed something over to the community. He did that with Friendica in 2012 when he concentrated on Red and the Zot protocol. He did it with Hubzilla in 2018 when he concentrated on Osada, Zap and Zot6. He did it again with Osada and Zap in 2020 when he concentrated on three new forks and the further advancement of Zot.
However, only Friendica and Hubzilla had big enough communities to really take over. Zap never really took off because it had no apparent advantages over Hubzilla in practice. Osada was soon discontinued because it was basically Zap with a different branding and different default settings. But at least Zap had someone to take care of it. And besides, on New Year's Eve of 2022, everything between Hubzilla and the streams repository was discontinued anyway because it was superseded by (streams) itself.
With (streams), it's different again. The existence of (streams) is fairly well-known on Hubzilla, except maybe among people who have only just joined Hubzilla. But hardly anyone knows what (streams) really is like, and that's only those who use it.
None of them has ever written and published a "test drive" that'd compare (streams) with Hubzilla. I've always wanted to, but I don't know if it makes sense anymore. It might even be counter-productive because it might lure people into (streams) at a point at which it's very buggy.
But as next to nobody on Hubzilla knows what advantages (streams) may have that might outweigh the cutting of lots of features, and as lots of features were cut on the way from Hubzilla to (streams) in the first place, there's zero incentive for Hubzilla users to try (streams).
And so there are only a few dozen (streams) users at best. There have never been more than seven public, open-registration instances, and they're dwindling now that nobody knows what'll become of the streams repository.
Worse yet, it looks like none of these few dozen users has both a) the time and b) the skills to pick up where Mike left. Several bugs are being hunted down, but it is unclear if anyone will fix them.
Fortunately, Mike has not entirely retired. Every few days or so, he is caught contributing to either the streams repository or Forte. But it looks like ironing out the bugs relies on community contributions.
Unfortunately, once-stable (streams) was left not only as a fairly unstable construction site, but it never reached the point that it was planned to reach: Fediverse-wide nomadic identity using ActivityPub. (streams) is nomadic, so it's possible to survive the shutdown of an instance if you've cloned your channel. But with there being fewer and fewer public instances, it becomes increasingly harder to find places where to clone your channel unless you set up your own instance.
Thanks to nomadic identity, it's possible to export the entirety of your channel into one or several JSON files. But these JSON files are so (streams)-specific that even the attempt at uploading them to a Hubzilla channel might destroy the whole hub. So nomadic identity couldn't save your channel if the last public (streams) instance vanished.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams)

Badlands I Utah by mcalma68

Motorbiking Hokkaido! Akan-Mashu National Park! Motorbiking Hokkaido! Akan-Mashu National Park! The Akan-Mashu National


Okay if I read that correctly if I want an Hubzila instance I need to setup one by myself cause there are no public ones provided by others. Which is, after reading the features, fully understandable,

Oh, there are several public, open-registration instances. See and .
Is there any information abour Friendica's filespace
Can I image this as an image only post, which is easily shareable. Is this more like a "cloud" where the image is stored ready to embed in an post

Friendica would be the Swiss army knife of the Fediverse if Hubzilla wasn't it.
Friendica's file space is just simply that, file space. With an integrated, very simple file management GUI. With subfolders. No fancy binary trickery, no obscuring, nothing. You can, for example, upload files and attach them to posts like you can attach files to posts on Mastodon, only that you upload them to a file space first, and you know exactly where your files are.
As for posts, I've already explained them. Friendica's flavour of Mastodon toots can be styled as full-blown blog posts with all shebang, and I mean all shebang. What WordPress and other specialised blogging engines can do, so can Friendica. All the tricks of the trade. Text formatting to no end, headlines, centred text, tables etc., even a title, an abstract/summary and a category which is fully separate from hashtags which Friendica supports as well.
And you can embed images in posts within the text, between paragraphs, tiny images can probably even placed right within a line. As many images as you want.
On Mastodon, you're limited to four images dangling below the post as file attachments. On Friendica, you can upload them to your file space and use a whole dozen of them to spice up a travel log post by putting them in-between paragraphs. Even though Mastodon can't even render that correctly.
Or you can upload the images to your Friendica file space, copy the image file URLs (which won't change, don't worry) and paste them into the HTML or Markdown code of your posts in a blog entirely elsewhere.
All the same goes for Hubzilla. But Hubzilla adds access permissions on top, and they don't necessarily all default to fully public. And Hubzilla adds WebDAV so you can use your Hubzilla file space as a cloud file storage which you can mount on your desktop OS, maybe even automatically.
However, I've already mentioned this caveat: If you want to upload an image to your Hubzilla file space and use it as an image in a Hubzilla post, you have to use Hubzilla's own built-in Images app so that Hubzilla recognises the file as an image. Upload it using the Files app or via WebDAV, and it'll be like any other file to Hubzilla.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Friendica #HubzillaToday I learned that you can't always give detailed descriptions of Fediverse software logos in alt-text.
That is, you can, but only one. Once you've got two, chances are you'll exceed 1,500 characters. Three or more, and you will definitely have to simplify the descriptions and leave details out.
I've just described the very simple (streams) logo in over 350 characters and the Firefish logo in almost 1,000 characters. Only these two would have so many characters combined that there won't be much room for more, such as text transcripts or even only describing where the logos are. And these are still somewhat limited.
I have to shorten them and discard visual information. The only alternative would be to do for meme posts what I do for my virtual world images, namely write two image descriptions, a short one for the alt-text and detailed one for the post which nobody will read because it's too excessively long.
Sorry, blind or visually-impaired users, for letting you down, but that's the way it is.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #Fediverse #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #A11y #Accessibility Nein.
Denn Hubzilla basiert nicht auf ActivityPub. Es basiert auf Zot. ActivityPub ist zwar seit Juli 2017 verfgbar. Hubzilla hatte es zuerst, zwei Monate vor Mastodon. Aber es ist ein Add-on, es ist optional, standardmig ist es auf Nutzerseite sogar deaktiviert, und es kann fr ganze Hubs (= Serverinstanzen) deaktiviert werden. Und selbst mit deaktiviertem ActivityPub wre Hubzilla immer noch fderiert.
Wenn Hubzilla qua Basisprotokoll nicht Teil des Fediverse wre, wrde ich dir jetzt von auerhalb des Fediverse antworten.
Auch (streams) basiert nicht auf ActivityPub, sondern auf Nomad, einer Weiterentwicklung von Zot, nur da hier ActivityPub in den Kern eingebaut und standardmig aktiviert ist. Aber es kann im Gegensatz zu Nomad abgeschaltet werden.
Und soweit ich das mitbekommen habe, hat auch Friendica erst 2023 von seinem eigenen DFRN als Basisprotokoll auf ActivityPub umgestellt, das es schon seit 2019 untersttzt.
Gem der Definition "Fediverse = ActivityPub als Basisprotokoll" gehrt Friendica also erst seit der Umstellung auf ActivityPub dazu und nicht schon seit 2010, und Hubzilla und (streams) gehren gar nicht dazu. Gem dieser Definition fing das Fediverse erst an zu existieren, als das erste Projekt direkt auf ActivityPub aufgesetzt wurde.
Darber wird aber nirgendwo diskutiert und auf Mastodon schon gar nicht. 75% der Fediverse-Nutzer haben von Hubzilla noch nie auch nur gehrt, von (streams) haben noch weniger gehrt. Und da diese drei nicht schon immer auf ActivityPub basiert haben, wissen noch viel weniger Leute.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #LangerPost #CWLangerPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #ActivityPub #DFRN #Friendica #Zot #Hubzilla #Nomad #Streams #(streams) There are mainly two projects that come to my mind that could do what you want: essentially act as an online file hoster with a side of also posting uploaded image files to the Fediverse. But none specialise in it.
is a better-than-Facebook Facebook alternative from 2010 that's wed to a full-blown, all-frills, long-form blogging engine. Its built-in file space is kind of a necessity for embedding images in a post.
was basically built on top of Friendica and has even more features that you may or may not use on top of most of Friendica's features. The key advantage may be that Hubzilla offers WebDAV access, but to my knowledge, Hubzilla doesn't recognise image files as images unless they're uploaded with its built-in Photos app.
Both support hotlinking content.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Friendica #Hubzilla I'm among those who want to do what's right myself. But I go to greater lengths.
Describing my images at all doesn't cut it for me. I go into small details for those who would love to go exploring a whole new and unknown world just by looking at my images, but who can't see them. If something about my images isn't common knowledge, I explain it, I explain the explanation and so forth, just because I think having people look such things up is not accessible and not inclusive.
Whenever someone likes something about someone else's image descriptions, I try to implement it myself. That's why I go as far as describing the position, height and angle of the camera if it's out of the ordinary.
I also try hard to follow as many rules of good image descriptions as possible and follow them to a tee. I transcribe text that's impossible to read. There's a rule that all text within the borders of an image must be transcribed, but there's none about unreadable text. I always prefer to err on the side of too much.
The only rule I break is the rule that alt-text must be as short as possible, preferably no longer than 200 characters. But that rule conflicts with the other rules, with what seems to make an image description good and with what my images in particular need. And besides, there seem to be more people in the Fediverse who like detailed descriptions than people who insist in short alt-text.
And so I fill the alt-text up to the limit of 1,500 characters imposed by several Fediverse projects. And what goes into the alt-text is actually already greatly shortened from the sheer monstrosity of a detailed image description that I put into the post.
I can take several days to describe one image. The resulting full, long image description can be longer than a hundred standard Mastodon toots for one single image, just so that it can provide all information that I think must be provided.
Obviously, this fails to satisfy everyone, even nearly everyone. I guess that for many Fediverse users, even my short descriptions in the alt-text are too long because they keep exceeding 1,000 characters. Even then, they're lacking. In particular, they're almost always lacking text transcripts because they don't have enough room.
The text transcripts are in the full, long, detailed description in the post. But many people can't even be bothered to open the content warning behind which the post is hidden, much less read tens of thousands of characters of image description or have them read to them.
And then I come across things like by that says that AI image descriptions are generally vastly superior to human-written ones.
Apparently, AI is fully capable of actually perfectly satisfying absolutely everyone with image descriptions, no matter what kind of image has to be described, and no matter who the audience may be.
Apparently, the minimum requirements for image descriptions in the Fediverse have shifted. Halfway accurate descriptions aren't that much better than nothing anymore. They aren't good enough anymore. No matter what humans produce, it isn't good enough anymore.
Even if I spend two full days, sunrise to sunset, describing one single image in over 60,000 characters which I've actually done, the description isn't good enough. And I don't mean good enough in size. I also mean good enough in accuracy, level of detail and informativity.
No matter how niche and how obscure the topic of my images is, any AI out there can describe the same image in fewer characters, but at the same time in more details, with more information and even factually more accurately. And this is apparently the minimum level that counts as good enough.
Basically, my image descriptions only serve to satisfy Mastodon's fully sighted alt-text police and for me to have an edge over their quality requirements. At least until they decide that my descriptions aren't useful enough. From that point on, I'll be the only one out there who finds AI descriptions sub-par in comparison with my own ones.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #AI #AIVsHuman #HumanVsAI #A11y #Accessibility

R0008301 by samjstone

Long Covid data - on prevalence and on funding

AI Asian female wearing bikini. I created this art today. Hope you all enjoy.
, , , , , hair,

The Fediverse has been decentralised for eight years before Mastodon was launched. Even when it was only StatusNet.
And it has been consisting of multiple different projects with independent developers since July, 2010, when Mistpark was launched, today known as Friendica. That was five and a half years before Mastodon.
When the first instance of Mastodon was spun up in 2016, it was immediately able to connect to multiple GNU social instances, multiple Friendica nodes and multiple Hubzilla hubs.
Mastodon is not and has never been the only decentralised thing in the Fediverse.
The only thing that Mastodon has introduced to the Fediverse is the tendency to clone commercial, centralised silos including their shortcomings. Whereas Friendica wanted to be an alternative to Facebook, but better than Facebook, Mastodon aimed to be an as-close-as-possible Twitter ripoff.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #FediverseOkay, I'll bite. Here goes nothing. Please excuse me for this quick and dirty description and for not explaining what Paisley is and describing what a Paisley pattern and this particular one looks like. But the weather is nice today, the sun is shining, and I've got some other things to do. Beware, though, this will be long.
This part would go into the post:
This avatar image was generated either by David Revoy and Andreas Gohr's Cat Avatar Generator from 2016 () or by David Revoy's successor from 2022 (). The image was automatically composed from parts that are licensed under , using code under the same license.
Next comes the actual image description, albeit too long for alt-text. Sorry, I had no time to shrink it down to under 1,500 characters. So here are 3,296 characters of image description, written in almost one hour, which you can peruse in whatever way you want.
Digital drawing of a stylised, cartoonish cat, automatically put together by an online image generator in a style similar to clip-art vector graphics. This means that all colours are solid, and there are no gradients. The cat is sitting, propped up on its fore legs. Its fur is mostly a tan, a medium-light and slightly desaturated tone of brown with a hint of orange. The outlines of the furry parts of the cat and the underside of its body are essentially in the same tone, but only roughly three quarters as bright. There is a small, irregularly-shaped spot on the cat's upper back in a much lighter, more desaturated tone of brown, reminiscent of sand. All four paws and a small part of the right fore leg from the paw upward are tinted beige, an even lighter and more desaturated tone of brown. The cat's head is more than twice as large as its body and legs combined. It has some fluff on both sides, pointing upward and, at the top, curled inward. It is displayed at a three-quarter angle towards the right while the body is almost completely oriented to the right. The cat's eyes are mostly white with black outlines except for the inner sides. They are wide open and slightly pointy on the outer edges near the top. The irises are tiny, upright, medium green ovals with their own black outlines, black oval pupils and one small white highlight spot each. Around the right eye from the cat's point of view, which is on the left from the on-looker's point of view, there is a bright spot, shaped irregularly and similarly to an ink blot and in the same tone of beige as the paws. The nose is a tiny triangle with one corner pointing down. It is a tone of brown that's minimally less bright, minimally more saturated and and minimally more reddish than the fur. Its outline is the same darker tone of tan than most of the other outlines. Two of these also indicate a snout, one above the nose, one to its right. The cat's mouth is open, given the impression of something between joy and surprise. It could be described as an irregular oval, weren't it for the small dent in the upper middle. It is much closer to the right eye than to the left one from the cat's point of view. On the inside, it is dark red with a medium-dark red part of the tongue in the lower left and a single tiny white pointy tooth between the tongue and the right eye from the cat's point of view. The mouth in general, the tongue and the tooth have black outlines. The cat's tail is about twice as long as the body and held upward in a curve that approaches the head from behind. Near the end, there is an irregularly shaped patch of fur in the same tone of sandy brown as the spot on the upper back. The fur on the tip of the tail is curled outward. The cat is wearing a bandana cloth on its head, mostly neutral dark grey with a patternless Paisley-like print in mostly neutral medium-light grey except for one style element which is a little lighter grey. The cloth is tied on the right of the hat from the cat's point of view which is the left from the on-looker's point of view. It appears to be wrapped around the cat's ears, but the tips of the cat's actual ears are revealed above where the ear-shaped sides of the bandana cloth meet its centre. The background of the image is a plain, neutral bright white.
Again, apologies for writing so much, for not editing it down to an alt-text-compatible length and for still leaving out information such as what the simplified Paisley pattern on the bandana looks like. But I need to get some other things done, and I don't want to spend an entire sunny summer afternoon editing the description of an image of a cartoon cat.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #AltText #ImageDescription #Alt4U #Alt4You #AltText4U #AltText4You Okay. So Fediverse 1.0 was allegedly Mastodon, only Mastodon and nothing but Mastodon.
Fediverse 2.0 is entirely commercial, corporate and mostly centralised silos: Flipboard, WordPress, Ghost, Threads.
Which iteration of the Fediverse will finally acknowledge the existence of Friendica which is five and a half years older than Mastodon, and which federated with Mastodon the very instance that Mastodon was launched
The existence of Hubzilla which is still ten months older than Mastodon, which also federated with Mastodon when the latter was launched, and which was actually the first Fediverse project to introduce ActivityPub, two months before Mastodon
Pleroma Akkoma Misskey Firefish Iceshrimp Sharkey Catodon Mitra Socialhome GoToSocial Lemmy /kbin Mbin PieFed Sublinks Pixelfed Funkwhale Castopod PeerTube Owncast Mobilizon Gancio BookWyrm Inventaire And all the others
Mastodon's current "market share" in the free, decentralised Fediverse is some 70%. Not 100%. Even though the Fediverse feels like 100% Mastodon when you're on Mastodon. But it isn't.
At no point in the history of the Fediverse has it ever been only Mastodon. , whom the blog post mentions, can confirm that. After all, it was him who invented the Fediverse. Twice as long ago as Rochko invented Mastodon.
By the way: If the Fediverse was only Mastodon, you couldn't read this.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse

1

Ich liebe es, wenn groartige Ideen haben, ohne jemals irgendwelche Praxiserfahrungen aufzuweisen.

Es gibt sicher auch sehr kompetente Erziehungswissenschaftler. Diese zeichnen sich meist dadurch aus, dass Sie auch an einer Schule arbeiten.

With five differences, however.
One, it wouldn't encompass a select few Mastodon instances. It would likely encompass all instances of several non-Mastodon Fediverse projects.
Two, it wouldn't be based on allowing. It would be based on blocking.
Three, it wouldn't be based on handling instances. It would be based on handling one entire project. One flick of a switch, and tens of thousands of Mastodon instances, all Mastodon instances that exist and all that are yet to come, would be out, just because they're Mastodon.
Four, it wouldn't be "if you don't defederate from Mastodon, we'll block you" watertight.
Five, in theory, if this went all the way, both sides would profit, not only one.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Mastodon #Fediverse

Plus de 4 ans aprs le dbut de la pandmie, on estime 28,5 millions de dcs et 65 millions de personnes souffrant de
Retrouvez l'article de actupparis et winslowla
"
RT actupparis: 65 MILLIONS DE COVID LONG ET A CONTINUE !
actupparis et winslowla dressent un tat des lieux de la pandmie de COVID toujours en cours.

Nous publions aujourd'hui un quatrime extrait

Okay, let's see if I got it halfway right last year.
The following are two excerpts from which includes three images, all with full, detailed image descriptions in the post itself. I don't have a character limit, so I can write much, much longer image descriptions in posts than you can in alt-texts.
I should note that these image descriptions are almost a year old and hopelessly outdated. This includes colours not being described in accessible ways. I should also note that the four nebula textures almost had me decide not to post the three images in the first place because I didn't know how to describe them on my usual level.
The first two excerpts are from the description of . It is not purely astrophotography rather, it's a scenery including nine spaceships, two robots, one elaborate teleporter and a cubic backdrop showing four surfaces with space photograph textures. The whole description is over 37,000 characters long, and it took me over eight hours to write, so maybe it's a bit understandable if the detail descriptions of the space photographs are somewhat brief.
First excerpt:
The displays are mostly surrounded by cubes which she had made, too, and which are amongst the items which she released as Aley. These cubes show space pictures on the inside, and they are fully transparent from the outside. Normally, they are the size of a whole region, but they were resized for OpenSimFest to work as display backdrops. The sides show various nebula while the top and the bottom only show a star field.
Second excerpt:
The space cube in the first picture shows a photograph of otherwise nameless IC 434, as it is designated in the Index Catalogue, on the left-hand side. It is a part of the Orion B molecular cloud, a star-forming region in the constellation of Orion. However, the image seems to be altered. For starters, it is mirrored with the north to the right and the east to the bottom.
IC 434 itself is shown as a rose-coloured nebula extending mostly horizontally with an almost sharp lower edge below its long and thin brightest part, but flaring upwards from there with its brightness increasing in a number of steps. These flares increase in height, the farther to the right they are. In front of it, almost in the middle, there is the dark shape of the Horsehead Nebula, also known by its designations Barnard 33 and LDN 1630 in Lynds' Catalogue of Dark Nebulae.
Below and to the right of the Horsehead Nebula, the star HD 37903 can be seen shining with a faint lavender tint, but not so much the reflection nebula NGC 2023 which it would normally illuminate. What is even stranger is that Alnitak or Zeta Orionis which should be a very bright star to the right of IC 434 in this picture is missing there is another, smaller purple nebula in its place. The Flame Nebula, also known by its designations NGC 2024 and Sharpless 277, is in its usual place below where Alnitak would be, glowing orange-red while being partially obscured by a darker cloud in the middle.
The texture in the back is a photograph of the Crab Nebula, also known by the designations Messier 1, NGC 1952 in the New General Catalogue, Taurus A and Sharpless 244. It is the remnant of the supernova SN 1054 that was observed on Earth from July 4th, 1054 on, and it is in the constellation of Taurus.
The Crab Nebula generally consists of two components. The remains of the supernova explosion have formed thin, thread-like and chaotic structures that glow from lime green near the upper right limits above the edge of the image to yellow slightly closer to the centre already to orange farther to the lower left to a deep red on the lower left limits. In addition, there is a diffuse, faint aqua blue cloud of glowing gas created by the Crab Pulsar which is what is left of the exploded star. It is smaller than the supernova remnants, and it doesn't reach nearly as far to the lower left.
The texture on the right-hand side is a photograph of otherwise nameless NGC 604, the ninth-largest known nebula. It is a star-forming region that resides in the Triangulum Galaxy which in turn is in the constellation of Triangulum.
The gases that make up the nebula are slowly contracting under their own gravitation to chaotic fibrous structures which might eventually form stars. The brightest parts are in the middle of the nebula, in the upper right corner of the image, where a cluster of about 200 young and massive stars are making the nebula glow by ionising it. Close to these stars, it is shown glowing in a cream or champagne tone. With no gradient in-between, the outer parts are glowing in a much less bright Burgundy red.
The third excerpt is from the description of . As it is within the same post, and the first image description had already grown to a record-breaking length, I didn't want to re-describe everything that had already been described for the first image. So this description is only a bit over 26,000 characters long.
Here is the excerpt:
It is the same space cube as in the first picture, but rotated counter-clockwise by 90 degrees. The Crab Nebula is on the left-hand side now, and NGC 604 is in the back.
On the right-hand side, there is a photograph of the Lagoon Nebula, also known by the designations Messier 8, Sharpless 25, RCW 146 in the Rodgers, Campbell & Whiteoak Catalogue and Gum 72 in the Gum catalogue of emission nebulae. It is a star-forming region in the constellation of Sagittarius. The nebula itself is greatly shifted to the left on the texture and thereby towards the background from the on-looker's point-of-view.
In comparison with NGC 604, the Lagoon Nebula appears much more as an actual nebula. The gases are more diffuse and spread more homogenously. The brightest spot is also known as the Hourglass Nebula or NGC 6523. On its left-hand edge, hardly separatable from the Hourglass Nebula itself, there is the very young star Herschel 36 which ionises the gases in the nebula and makes them glow, is left of centre in the picture, but far to the right in the nebula. The Hourglass Nebula shows a light teal glow. In turn, it is surrounded by darker clouds through which some more young stars manage shine, including smaller, very dark and dense clouds which are slowly collapsing under their own gravity and may eventually turn into stars themselves. Immediately to the right of the Hourglass Nebula and below it in a dark cloud, there are a few bits of nebula glowing purple.
To the left of the large dark cloud to the left of the bright centre, there is NGC 6530, a particularly striking open cluster of young giant and hypergiant stars which contribute to the brighter glow extending farther to the left than to the right. The cluster extends to the top left of the bright centre behind a very large dark cloud, contributing to the unbalanced spread of the glow some more. Towards the edges, the nebula fades through a faint taupe to Bordeaux red. The faint glow to the left of the star cluster NGC 6523 is designated as an individual nebula, IC 4678 a small part of it is cut off at the texture edge.
Outside the Lagoon Nebula, way to the right and above the bright spot that is the Hourglass Nebula, on the bottom right edge of a Bordeaux red nebula cloud, there is a bright star designated as HD 164385 in the Henry Draper Catalogue. Farther in the same direction are two more, less luminous stars. The brighter one is HD 314895 I couldn't find a designation for the one nearby to its upper left.
So, are these okay, or are they lacking
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta
Hast du ne Ahnung, ob Bluesky sich um eine natrliche Anbindung ans Fediverse bemht
Also ohne die Krcke Brcke.
Eher so wie es Friendica mit BS macht

Die doch nicht.
Bluesky selbst ist bis heute ein zentralistischer Silo mit nur einer Instanz. Sie haben die Technologie, dezentral zu werden, aber in der tglichen Praxis ist die innerhalb von Bluesky nie zum Einsatz gekommen.
An Fderation mit irgendwas anderem haben die gar kein Interesse, schon gar nicht, wenn das bedeutet, da sie ein "Konkurrenzprotokoll" untersttzen mssen. Mit Bridgy Fed und Friendica sind sie nur auf deren Bestrebungen hin fderiert und auch das nur, weil sie das entweder selbst noch nicht gemerkt haben oder keine Anstrengungen unternehmen, das zu unterbinden.
Die einzigen Unterschiede zu diaspora* damals ist, da Bluesky sein AT-Protokoll offengelegt hat, whrend Friendica damals das diaspora*-Protokoll reverse-engineeren mute, da diaspora* umgekehrt schon dezentral war, als Friendica es anbohrte, und da die Fderation von Friendica nach diaspora* sowohl ohne Bridge als auch ohne diaspora*-Konto funktioniert.
Auerdem hat Bluesky das gar nicht ntig. Die Leute rennen Bluesky doch so schon die Bude ein, weil nichts nher dran ist an "buchstblich Twitter ohne Musk". Bluesky ist jetzt der heie Schei, gerade auch fr Leute, die von "Mastodon und dem Fediverse" enttuscht sind. Da braucht es keine Einbindung externer Nutzer.
CC:
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #LangerPost #CWLangerPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Bluesky #BridgyFed #Diaspora* #FriendicaFollow Friday, today with Second Life and OpenSimulator in the Threadiverse. That's "Reddit clones" for those of you who don't know.
Unofficial Lemmy community for Second Life:
Unofficial Mbin magazine for Second Life:
Unofficial Lemmy community for OpenSim:
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Lemmy #Mbin #Threadiverse #SecondLife #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #FollowFriday Zumindest auf Hubzilla und (streams) ist das so, ja, aber nur, wenn sonst niemand dieselben Kontakte hat. Wenn du das Zeug filterst, aber jemand anders empfngt es ungefiltert, dann landet es natrlich auf dem Pubstream (= lokale oder fderierte Timeline, standardmig adminseitig abgeschaltet).
Deswegen knnen es sich Privatinstanzen auch eher erlauben, den Pubstream zu aktivieren: Wenn es eh nur einen User gibt, der seine Kanle alle schn filtert und moderiert, dann moderiert er den ganzen Pubstream gleich mit, weil da ja nur der Kram aus seinen Streams auftaucht.
Bei Mastodon bin ich mir nicht so sicher, ob das da auch klappt, also, ob Mastodon die fderierte Timeline mit Content von vor oder nach den Filtern der Nutzer beschickt.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #LangerPost #CWLangerPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Mastodon #Hubzilla #Streams

DSC4619 by samjstone

"Mit einer Warnung ausblenden" ist ein vollautomatischer CW-Generator. Im Prinzip dasselbe, was Mistpark, heute Friendica, schon seit 2010 als Standard fr CWs hat.
Da verlt man sich nicht darauf, da alle anderen schn CWs ins Summary-Feld eintragen, um ihre sensiblen oder triggernden Posts zu verbergen. Statt dessen trgt man entsprechende Wrter, Begriffe, Hashtags etc. in eine Filterliste ein, und die entsprechenden Posts verschwinden hinter einem Button. Wenn man auf den Button klickt, kann man sie lesen.
Seit Ende 2022 hat Mastodon das auch, das wei blo kaum jemand. Friendica, Hubzilla und (streams) hatten das schon vor Mastodon. Da ist diese Funktion von den hauptschlichen Wortfiltern komplett separat und nennt sich "NSFW".
"Vollstndig ausblenden" heit, du kriegst den Post nicht hinter einem Button, sondern du kriegst ihn berhaupt nicht. Also, gar nicht. Der passiert in deiner Timeline nicht.
Wobei das Wording auf Mastodon doof ist. Aber das ist auch der Funktionsweise der Filter auf Mastodon geschuldet. Auf Mastodon kommen Beitrge ja erstmal in deine Inbox rein, und dann entscheidet ein Filter: Packe ich die jetzt ohne Warnung in die Timeline oder mit Warnung oder berhaupt nicht
Zumindest auf Hubzilla und (streams) sitzen die hauptschlichen Wortfilter vor der Inbox. Was von einem der Filter erfat wird, kommt gar nicht erst in die Inbox rein. Und wenn man selbst der einzige Adressat auf der Instanz fr einen Beitrag ist, und der wird gefiltert, lehnt der ganze Server den Beitrag ab. Was dann durchkommt, da entscheidet dann NSFW, wenn man es aktiviert hat, ob es versteckt wird oder nicht.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #LangerPost #CWLangerPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Mastodon #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #FilterSome cities have inspired multiple sims in OpenSim each and keep inspiring new sims. This mostly goes for New Orleans, Paris, London and Venice. Havana has become kind of popular since some appropriate dummy houses have popped up.
I've seen two sims inspired by Rome. One of them represents modern-day Rome, including a sadly unused event location built into the Colosseum, and it was appropriately built by an Italian. The other one is inspired by ancient Rome.
There have also been two takes on Liverpool. One is 19th-century Liverpool as being reconstructed in-scale by . This actually has to be one of the most ambitious city sims so far, also because all buildings are custom recrations of historical Liverpool buildings rather than generic ones picked up on the Hypergrid. The other one was built on my home grid, Dorenas World, by a good acquaintance of mine. However, it's part of a Beatles-themed sim, and it's basically only the Cavern Club with some generic surroundings. On the other hand, the Cavern Club is a fully functional, albeit fairly small and kind of hard-to-find, event location that saw our most recent New Year's party.
This Beatles sim also contains a bit of London, mainly the Abbey Road studios, that famous zebra crossing, some generic surroundings, partly with shops in them, a Beatles museum in a generic store building and the scene of the 1969 rooftop concert.
It also has one of the two representations of Hamburg's famous Reeperbahn, but only a small one with a bit of the Groe Freiheit. A much bigger one on a varsim, also including the Spielbudenplatz with an event stage, but lacking the Beatles-Platz with the five silhouette statues, is on another grid which seems to change its name every once in a while. The same grid usually also offers a fairly accurate OpenSim representation of the St. Pauli Fischmarkt, and it even used to have a Hamburger Dom sim with a stand-in for the eponymous, enormous fairground on it.
New York City has been attempted a few times, too, but the highly detailed, heavily scripted, densely packed 4x4 var in 's Groovyverse with its many custom buildings and textures is hard to top. It offers things ranging from a working Subway line with various stations to a freebie store inside Macy's which has been changed to only legal content to the Empire State Building with an art dco event location inside, complete with an extensive backstage area.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #VirtualCities #NewOrleans #Paris #London #Venice #Havana #Rome #Liverpool #Hamburg #NewYorkCity #DorenasWorld #Groovyverse

Dolphins in Depth: Dolphins made surprise moves on cut day

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But what is "enough" What is the ideal mixture
(All character counts below are taken directly from which is a production-grade example of option 1.)
That's "only" close to 1,600 characters.
Or...
That's over 7,800 characters alone.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Memes

Pipeline release! nf-core/mag v3.0.3 - 3.0.3 2024-08-27!

Please see the changelog:

-read-sequencing -sequencing

Dolphins In Depth: Dolphins have concerns as cut down day looms

not only affects adults but also .

While many people recover quickly from COVID, some don't, experiencing symptoms that can last for or .

A new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association sheds light on the effect a infection can have on over a longer period.

In school-aged children, we heard commonly that children were experiencing trouble with their , focusing, , having trouble , and stomach , Gross told Salon.
And in the teenagers, we were hearing about symptoms related to fatigue and pain, having body or muscle or joint pain, being very tired or sleepy, having low energy, as well as having trouble with memory and focusing.

A unique symptom the researchers saw in the teenage group was changes in or a of or .
Additionally, researchers found clusters of symptoms that are unique to school-aged children and teenagers. The first were symptoms that affect every organ system in the body.

These are the children with the highest burden of symptoms, Gross said, adding that caregivers described these children as having a lower quality of life and more impact on their overall health.
The second type of long COVID we also saw across both the ages was predominantly characterized by fatigue and pain.

I don't think I've actually over-explained anything yet. If anything, I still find my explanations lacking because I still assume some certain basic knowledge to be common, for example, what a meme is in general and what a certain film or series is and who the characters used in the template are.
And in my original images, I've yet to go as far as explaining the very basics of 3-D virtual worlds to people. Instead, I only go down to the "What is Second Life" level.
If there's such a thing as a feasibility-to-necessity sliding scale, I am trying to be close to the necessity end, but I think I'm not nearly close enough. I don't think I've even reached WCAG 2.2 level A yet, much less level AA or even AAA if that's possible at all in social media posts.
For reference, here are some examples so you can judge yourself if it's condescending in any way.

(Apologies to blind or visually-impaired users if what's behind these links is not accessible. I'm not sure if the UI of (streams) has been tested and optimised for accessibility. And at least my meme channel has no Mastodon accounts amongst its four contacts that aren't me. Also, apologies to autistic users if Mastodon has automatically generated a preview image with eye contact. I don't have much control over that, and Hubzilla's own preview feature can't show what a post will look like on Mastodon.)
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Inclusion #A11y #AccessibilityI should have expected that much.
I've asked a bunch of blind Mastodon users whether they prefer explanations for images, especially memes, as external links or written into the post. Of course, the majority preferred the latter because it's much more convenient.
But I were to explain a meme myself in the post so that nobody would require any external sources of information, that'd lead to tens of thousands of characters of explanation. When I reminded those whom I had asked of this detail which they may not have noticed, all except one noped out. Even a sighted but neurodiverse user chimed in and spoke out against such massive piles of explanations, all in spite of often requiring explanations to understand things.
All of a sudden, the external link seemed more preferable than having enough explanations served on a silver platter to not have any questions.
Now I basically have three options:

I would love to take the second option. I have so many meme ideas and even ready-to-post image macros that I'd like to put out on my channels. But my "library" of copy-paste explanations of templates and genres and concepts and background information is far from complete, and I'd always have to write thousands of characters individually for each detailed explanation. The first option requires so much time and effort and energy, albeit decreasing over time with my growing copy-paste library, that there'll be weeks between two meme posts.
Most people, however, would prefer or even demand the first option and already regard the second option as lazy and ableist. Today's Fediverse feels like you're easily branded ableist in it, once you've got some exposure on Mastodon. Pretty much the only ones who'd want me to take the second option are those who know what massive piles of text the first option is likely to cause. And only those few know whom I've personally told or even shown.
And if you really think about it, if there's a great lot to explain for people to understand an image, none of the three options is really accessible and inclusive. There simply is no way to explain that much in a way that's sufficiently accessible for everyone out there.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Memes #Ableist #Ableism #Inclusion #A11y #Accessibility I do, and I shall continue to provide it.
I've just explained how I do it because it may be useful for and his question whether image descriptions in the post are valid.
Let's just say I've gotten away with what I'm doing, but probably mostly because I do two descriptions, one that's as informative as possible, one for convenience to have an image description without opening the content warning and to satisfy the alt-text police.
It could be possible to get away with only an image description in the post, but probably only if it isn't hidden behind a content warning. I don't dare to try it myself, though.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta
And I agree that community is preferable to AI. AI won't be able to interpret cultural nuance or in-jokes, either. Thanks again.

AI will always be limited in comparison with humans. In order for it to be perfect, every AI out there must be absolutely perfectly omniscient in even the most obscure niche topics possible.
To take my own images as an example: AI may be capable of identifying a virtual 3-D scene as such and tell it from a real-life photograph. But AI cannot tell whether it's a virtual world or a video game. And no AI out there can tell right off the bat with 100% certainty from any image thrown at it that the image was made in a world based on OpenSimulator. To be fair, very very very few humans can.
In order to replace me and my manual writing, every last AI out there would have to be able to tell from an image in which place it was rendered, on which sim (that has been launched only some three days ago or so), in which grid.
Oh, and no AI out there will ever be able to transcribe text that's a fraction of a pixel high. I can. For I don't read the text from the image, but from the original.
CC:
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #OpenSim #OpenSimulator #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #AI #AIVsHuman #HumanVsAI What I do with my original images may seem a bit extreme, but still:
I give a full, detailed image description in the post itself. I don't have any character limit to worry about. Before I run out of characters, my posts grow so long that Mastodon rejects them, and AFAIK, Mastodon rejects anything over 100,000 characters.
That long description in the post contains all necessary explanations and transcripts of all text within the borders of the image. I need that description in the post because it's magnitudes too long to work in alt-text anywhere in the Fediverse.
But only an image description in a post might not satisfy the alt-text police who absolutely demand there be a useful alt-text with a good image description for each image. After all, they can't see the long description right away because the whole post is hidden behind a summary and content warning.
So I write an additional, much shorter image description just for the alt-text.
Also in the alt-text, after the short image description, there is a note that a full and more detailed image description with explanation and text transcripts in the post. If you're on Mastodon, Misskey or any of their forks, it is hidden behind a summary and content warning. If you're on Pleroma, Akkoma, Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) or anything else that supports in-line images, it follows right after the image.
That is, "short" is relative. As of recently, my alt-texts either reach the 1,500-character mark precisely, or they stop short of one or two characters.
I can only do without the long image description in the post when I post memes based on existing templates. The image description doesn't have to be so long and detailed, and it fits into the alt-text.
I'm still not sure whether I'll still put all explanations to understand the meme and its own explanation into the post, or whether I'll switch to simply linking to Web sites that explain these things such as or the .
Both would be inconvenient in their own ways, either the inconvenience of external links or the inconvenience of tens of thousands of characters of explanations in one place. But links would be much less work for me, and my meme post output would be higher. On the other hand, there are still things without sufficient explanations anywhere on the Web.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta If you really want to push it to the limit, here are two suggestions.
Mike Macgirvin has been a Fediverse developer for 14 years. He has created three Fediverse protocols, he has invented nomadic identity, he has created a whole bunch of Fediverse server applications from Mistpark, today known as Friendica, to Hubzilla to the streams repository to Forte most recently, all forked from each other. He currently maintains the latter two.
He's on (streams) himself, but his channel is still an "old school" one without FEP-ef61 implemented and without its DID scheme.
Also, there is , the creator and maintainer of Mitra. Apart from (streams) and Forte, Mitra is the only other Fediverse project that's working on implementing FEP-ef61 and nomadic identity via ActivityPub. Of course, he's on Mitra himself. And unlike (streams), Mitra has switched existing actors to FEP-ef61 on recent versions.
This means that you can not only test Flipboard's compatibility with Mitra, but you can also test Flipboard's compatibility with FEP-ef61 and its DID scheme. Keep in mind, though, that it's still very much a work in progress, and it may change.
Unfortunately, I don't know any (streams) channels with a DID right off the bat that could be interesting for Flipboard. I have two myself, but they're uninteresting.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #FEPef61 #Mitra #Streams #(streams) The issue I have with the comparison with explaining an image to someone over the phone is that I always have to expect the person on the other end to know exactly nothing about the image and its context and whatnot.
I have this issue with all images I post. Pictures from 3-D virtual worlds, memes about these virtual worlds, memes about the Fediverse.
And then I have to explain and explain and explain. And if at least one image from a virtual world is involved, I also have to describe and describe because the person on the other end has no idea at all what this virtual world and anything in it looks like, but they're curious.
Granted, on the phone, I have to explain and describe so much because the person on the other end keeps asking me questions. What is this, what is that, what does this mean, what does that mean, what does this look like, what does that look like
But in the Fediverse, people shouldn't even be required to ask these questions in the first place. Asking questions and waiting for an answer is much more of a hassle in the Fediverse than on the phone.
People shouldn't be required to ask me anything. If they have to ask me for visual detail descriptions or for explanations of certain things, it's almost like they have to ask me for the whole image description in the first place. An incomplete image description feels like no image description at all, just as useless. And not explaining enough feels no better.
To quote you:
Just do... Something, so that the person coming across it has enough context without having to ask for more.

That's my very goal.
But first of all, whenever I post an image, I have to deliver a humongous info dump so that even the last casual outsider who happens upon my image post understands it right away, no matter how niche and obscure the topic is.
I always take into consideration what Average Joe knows. Then I look at what is needed to know to understand my image posts. And then I have to fill the gap. I have to fill the entire gap myself, all the way to some very basics. And that gap is huge.
Sometimes, there are Web sites that can provide the needed explanations. But my understanding has always been that external links are too inconvenient, and everything has to be explained in the post itself, right where the image is.
If I explain a meme, I mention which template it is based on. But I can't just drop the name of the template. I have to explain the template. But the template is an image macro and a snowclone, and so I have to explain what an image macro is and what a snowclone is. Image macros were invented in the Something Awful forums and really exploded on 4chan, and so I have to explain what Something Awful is, what 4chan is, what imageboards are.
None of this is common knowledge that I can expect Average Joe to have, or can I I'm pretty sure I can't.
On top of that, I always have to explain what the meme text references. And that's always super-obscure. It's either the Fediverse beyond Mastodon, sometimes even the technology of the Fediverse outside Mastodon or the culture in a non-Mastodon Fediverse area. Or it's 3-D virtual worlds of which maybe one in over 200,000 Fediverse users has even only heard of.
Those 25,000 characters were 1,250 characters of explanation of the image itself. Plus 10,000 characters in six explanations for the meme template because I can't expect everyone to be familiar with the "One Does Not Simply Walk Into Mordor" template and its background. Plus another 12,500 characters in two explanations for the meme text because I can't expect everyone to be familiar with FEP-ef61 and nomadic identity and their background. Half of the whole explanation block is about the context of the meme text.
I mean, I can give one link to the KnowYourMeme page for the template I've used and be done with explaining the template. But linking to external content is inconvenient. People vastly prefer everything being explained in the post.
I've seen it all over this thread. Given the choice between externally-linked explanations and explanations in the post, right where the image is, people vastly prefer explanations in the post because they're infinitely more convenient. It's only when they learn that these explanations would amount to tens of thousands of characters altogether that they see the advantages of external links.
If I just provide a bunch of links, people tend to think I'm weaseling out of a few hundred characters of explanation.
And external explanations are only reliably readily available for meme templates and their backgrounds. It gets trickier for the Fediverse. There is the Join the Fediverse Wiki, but it's still utterly incomplete, and there aren't pages for everything. I can't simply link to an easy-to-understand wiki page for (streams) or for Forkeys or even for certain Forkeys. And even if there's an article on a Fediverse project, the article only covers more or less the technical basics, but it does not explain the culture of this project.
If you want the Misskey culture explained, or if you want the culture on the Forkeys explained, or if you want the Hubzilla culture explained, or if you want Forkeys explained, or if you want (streams) explained, then I'll have to do that. And if you don't want to have to ask, I'll have to do it in the post right away.
It gets even worse when I make memes about virtual worlds. Especially for the particular virtual worlds I post about, there is no general know-it-all wiki on that topic that I could peruse for explanations. There isn't any kind of info site for newbies or interested outsiders whatsoever, especially not with the in-depth technological and/or historical and/or cultural information frequently needed to understand my memes.
Images from these virtual worlds are the most extreme. In addition to extensive explanations, they require extensive visual descriptions that go far beyond the 1,500-character limit that Mastodon, Misskey and their forks not only impose on their own alt-texts, but also on external alt-texts.
I have to intertwine the explanations with visual descriptions. I have to intertwine the visual descriptions with explanations.
And I have to describe a lot. Both sighted and non-sighted people are extremely unlikely to know about these virtual worlds. But both sighted and non-sighted people may be curious about them. After all, hey, there are virtual worlds that actually exist! They're operational! They're alive! The metaverse is a thing that really exists right now!
It's literally like discovering a whole new world. Sighted people who are curious will ignore the context of a post and go wandering about the image and explore it with their eyes.
Blind or visually-impaired people can't do that, but they may want to. They may want to take in all the details of the image, just like sighted people can and do. But they can only do that if I describe the image in all its details. A typically short description that focuses on one or a few elements is as useless to them as no image description at all.
is of no help for me. That's because all I do is extreme edge-cases that have never been dealt with before. Extreme edge-cases that nobody has any even only remote experience with.
I'm the first to ever meme the Fediverse outside of Mastodon.
I'm the first to ever meme these virtual worlds.
And I'm the first to ever even consider describing virtual world images sufficiently.
None of these three has ever been done before I've tried it. And to this day, in all three cases, I'm still the only one who does it.
In fact, I think I was the very first Fediverse user ever to try and describe images while not being entirely constrained by Mastodon's limits. I was the first to explain images in the post itself where I don't have a 500-character limit rather than in the alt-text, and I think I'm still the only one.
This also means that is of no help for me because most of what I do to explain and describe an image does not even happen in the alt-text in the first place.
My meme explanations go into the post and not into the alt-text.
My virtual world images get short, very limited, purely visual descriptions in the alt-text and long, full, detailed, informative, explanatory descriptions plus a full set of text transcripts in the post. That's two descriptions for each image. My record is a bit over 1,400 characters of short description in the alt-text and over 60,000 characters of full description in the post, all for the same image. It took me two full days to write them.
All of this is with no precedence. Nobody else does it. There is zero experience with anything even close to it. And there are no definite guidelines for edge-cases like what I do.
I have to define everything myself. I have to cobble my definitions together from other definitions and guidelines and recommendations and other people's image descriptions. And I have to do it all with almost zero feedback.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Metaverse #VirtualWorlds #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #Memes #Inclusion #A11y #Accessibility
Last updated: 2024-09-13






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