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Long Island college hockey prodigy shattering

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The great AP community themselves are way more likely to whip up a Mastodon-only share button than a generic Fediverse share button, and they have done so in the past several times AFAIK.
The thinking behind this has always been one of these:

Oh, and Mastodon hasn't failed being more open. Mastodon has decided to not be more open. It's a fully intentional design decision and part of Mastodon's scheme to either make the rest of the Fediverse look bad or exclude it from "the Fediverse".
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dpose plainte pour diffamation contre un groupe d'extrme droite qui a agress verbalement et tent d'intimider une des quipes mobiles de le 5 dcembre 2025, sur le Nord littoral prs de .

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Comic fans...
-man way ome

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See Short Documentary About Making Of SOCIAL DISTORTION's Long-Awaited Eighth Album, 'Born To Kill'

My

That's the trouble: The only way to actually speak with screen reader users is to find them, single them out and mention them personally. And even then they will have to want to discuss these matters with you.
This is also because next to everyone in the Fediverse who isn't sighted is on Mastodon and only on Mastodon. And Mastodon has no support for groups whatsoever. Discussing things would be much easier if Mastodon had had full-blown group support, either simply compatible with existing Fediverse group solutions or with its own solution that's fully compatible with what else supports groups, already before Musk announced he'd take over Twitter. Then Mastodon's culture would include groups rather than being completely oblivious of groups.
What I know, though, is that blind and visually-impaired Mastodon users are happy to have some alt-texts. On the commercial social platforms, they got nothing. So they generally don't have sky-high demands. In fact, unless it's a matter of life and death, they don't really care how accurate a description is because they can't verify the accuracy anyway. Also, some like a bit of whimsy with their alt-texts.
But I'm rather safe than sorry. Besides, it isn't the blind or visually-impaired people who police alt-texts and image descriptions. Mastodon's alt-text police are fully sighted. And it's them who sanction you and who decide whether you're allowed to have any reach in the Fediverse, based on how you describe your images.
However, due to Mastodon's limitations, the alt-text police don't talk to each other either, nor do they ever talk to anyone who isn't sighted. So everyone enforces different quality standards while believing their standards are the official gold standards.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # The alt-text for the above image post CW: long (over 1,700 characters) View article View summary
If, for reasons that are beyond my control, the image in the post above should not have an alt-text, here is the actual alt-text from the original.
Digital shaded rendering of the main building of the Universal Campus, a downloadable island location for 3-D virtual worlds based on OpenSimulator. The camera position is about three metres or ten feet above the ground. The camera is tilted slightly upward and rotated slightly to the left from the building's longitudinal axis. The futuristic building is over 200 metres long, stretching far into the distance, and its front is about 50 metres wide. Its structure is mostly textured to resemble brushed stainless steel, and almost everything in-between is grey tinted glass. The main entrance of the building in the middle of the front has two pairs of glass doors. They are surrounded by a massive complex geometrical structure, very roughly reminiscent of a vintage video game spacecraft with the front facing upward. Four huge cylindrical pillars carry the roof end, the outer two of which extend beyond it. All are tilted away from the landing area in front of the building and at the same time outward to the sides. The sides of the building are slightly tilted themselves. In the distance, a large geodesic dome rises from the building. There is a large circular area in front of the main entrance as well as several wide paths. They have light concrete textures, and they are lined with low walls with almost white concrete textures. Furthermore, various shrubs and trees decorate the scenery. A more detailed description including explanations and text transcripts can be found in the post.

# # # # # # Quote-post of an actual image post of mine, complete with image alt-text and a long image description in the post itself CW: long (over 64,000 characters), quote-post, alt-text meta, image description meta, AI mentioned Artikel ansehen Zusammenfassung ansehen
If you really believe I never describe any of my images, here's a counter-proof: my last post with an actual image here on this Hubzilla channel before I moved my image-posting to (streams). It's from May 16th, 2024. By the way, the image should be embedded within the post, right above the "Image description" headline.
The image has an alt-text of exactly 1,500 characters with as detailed an image description as I could possibly fit into it, and in addition, it has a long image description in the post text itself that measures over 60,000 characters. It has to be the longest description for a single image in the history of the Fediverse. It took me two whole days, morning to evening, to research for and write this image description, and I wrote the alt-text in the morning of the following day. All without using any AI.
Fair warning: The image description is outdated in the ways that dimensions and colours are described, and parts of the explanations may be factually wrong. Besides, I didn't try hard enough to either avoid or explain technical and jargon terms. But I didn't know better back then, and I don't go around and edit all my image descriptions whenever I learn something new.
I could quote-post more image posts with alt-texts and either explanations or full descriptions in the post if this one post doesn't convince you. But this is just about my only image post that has nothing potentially triggering in the image. All the others have potentially triggering eye contact which would end up on older Mastodon versions and probably in many Mastodon apps in plain sight.
RE:
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # Your own posts aren't any better anyway CW: long (over 1,300 characters), Fediverse meta, Fediverse-beyond-Mastodon meta, alt-text meta, image description meta, character limit meta, hashtag meta View article View summary
On the other hand, when I look at your personal timeline, it's obvious that you've never really arrived on Mastodon. You break all kinds of rules. You break alt-text and image-describing rules, and you break Mastodon's cultural rules.
You write alt-texts in multiple paragraphs. You almost never use CWs, not for posts over 500 characters, not for US or Canadian politics, not for wars, never. You rarely use hashtags, and when you do, you sometimes put them in-line instead of all into the bottom line. In-line hashtags are inconvenient for screen reader users.
You boost image posts without checking whether the images have alt-texts, much less whether the alt-texts are accurate, sufficiently detailed and in line with the existing alt-text and image description rules. You boost posts about potentially disturbing topics that have no CWs.
So don't come lecturing me if your own doings are likely to get you silently muted and blocked by other Mastodon users left and right.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # I've described all my images since I've learned about alt-texts, and I put more effort and knowledge into them than anyone on Mastodon CW: long (almost 8,700 characters), Fediverse meta, Fediverse-beyond-Mastodon meta, alt-text meta, image description meta, character limit meta Artikel ansehen Zusammenfassung ansehen
Now listen here.
Ever since I've learned about alt-texts and image descriptions, I've described all my images. And unlike most Mastodon users, I've improved my image-describing further and further.
Whenever I learned something new about image descriptions, be it a rule, a guideline, a good practice or a Mastodon preference, I used this new knowledge in new image descriptions and declared all my previous image descriptions obsolete. And I've learned a lot over the years.
I've learned from Mastodon that if explanations are necessary to understand an image, they must be delivered immediately with the image post. Ever since, I've explained everything in my images that needs explaining. And since all my image posts are about extremely obscure niche topics, they need a whole lot of explanations.
I've learned from a physically disabled Mastodon user that not everyone can access alt-texts. She, for example, can't. Thus, explanations in the alt-text are lost to her. I've learned from her that explanations go into the post text. I've put all my explanations into the post text ever since.
I've learned from Mastodon that Mastodon tends to love long, detailed image descriptions. Considering how obscure the contents of my original images are and how nobody knows what anything in them looks like if they don't see it, I came to the conclusion that someone somewhere out there might need full, detailed descriptions. I've given my original images full, detailed descriptions ever since.
I've learned from various sources that alt-text must only describe what's important within the context of a post. But judging from my observations of Mastodon, its culture and its love for long alt-texts override this rule. If someone wants to know about all the small details in your images, the context doesn't matter. Thus, how detailed my image descriptions are depends on whether or not I have to expect someone being curious about the details.
I've learned by experimentation that Mastodon truncates long external alt-texts from outside at the 1,500-character mark. Also, Hubzilla (where I am) can only display so many characters of alt-text, and alt-text cannot be scrolled. Since the audience of my alt-texts is pretty much exclusively on Mastodon, I've put the full, long, detailed image descriptions into the post text.
I've learned from a blog post that alt-texts must never contain line breaks. Line breaks in alt-texts have a nasty side-effect for screen reader users: After each line break, screen readers assume that they're reading a new alt-text for a new image. And they start whatever they consider an individual image alt-text with something like, "Graphic." Thus, I write all my alt-texts as one single paragraph.
I've learned from another blog post, as well as personal experience with various Fediverse server applications, that alt-texts must never contain the double quotes commonly found on keyboards. Different frontends may misbehave in different ways, some fail very ungracefully. Thus, I no longer use these quotes in my alt-texts.
I've learned from Mastodon that even if there is an image description in the post text, there must always be an accurate and sufficiently detailed image description in the alt-text regardless. Otherwise you risk being sanctioned. I have described all my original images twice ever since: with a long and fully detailed description in the post text and a shorter description in the alt-text.
I've learned from blog posts and websites about alt-texts that text in images must be transcribed verbatim. However, nowhere that I've seen this rule written down, I've seen it mention text that's unreadable in the image while the author knows what's written there. My conclusion is that there is no exception for these texts. I tend to have many such texts. Thus, I transcribe all bits and pieces of text within the borders of my images if I have a way to read them. And I usually have.
I've learned from other blog posts about alt-texts that colours must not only be mentioned in image descriptions, but they must also be described. After all, blind people cannot be expected to know what e.g. Burgundy red is. Also, dimensions must be given not simply in absolute measures, but relatively to what else is in the image or to something that everyone is familiar with, namely the human body. Unfortunately, I've learned that so recently that I only have one original image post in which I make use of these techniques hence, all my older original image posts count as obsolete.
I've learned from yet elsewhere that races must not be mentioned, and genders must not be assumed. I abide by both when describing meme images. My original images, on the other hand, never contain actual human beings. Whenever I show an avatar, it's always one of my avatars whose gender I have personally defined, and these avatars can't really emulate real-life human phenotypes.
Most of the above has never been taken into consideration by anyone on Mastodon. I'm literally the only one in the Fediverse who takes describing images to such levels.
But I go beyond alt-texts and image descriptions.
I've learned from Mastodon that if there's something, anything in a post of yours that might disturb anyone in some way, the post requires a Mastodon-style content warning that mentions in which way the post is disturbing. Here on Hubzilla, that's a summary. It's the same thing, and Hubzilla had summaries before Mastodon had CWs.
From observing both Mastodon and the Web outside the Fediverse, I've compiled a list of potentially triggering topics. Even excluding national/state/provincial/regional politics, I've gathered 111 of these so far. I do my best to include each one whenever necessary. On top of that, I add CWs for many things I post about because I guess I go onto people's nerves when I post about them (the Fediverse, alt-text, image descriptions, hashtags, character limits, quote-posts, actual quote-posting etc.).
However, Hubzilla is not a Twitter wannabe. It's more like Facebook or blogging software. It only offers a summary (Mastodon: CW) field for posts and DMs, but not for comments (it has two different editors for when you reply and when you don't). I could try to add a summary (Mastodon: CW) using a pair of BBcode tags, and I've done so here, but I know from personal experience that the summary tags do not translate to a Mastodon CW in comments. I'd add an individual CW to each one of my comments, but Mastodon users will neither get an actual CW nor understand that I've tried.
So I double almost all my CW'd topics up with an appropriate set of hashtags. This is in line with the culture where I am: Here on Hubzilla and in its whole software family, we don't force poster-side CWs upon each other. Instead, we have them automatically generated for ourselves, reader-side, tailored to our individual needs. But this requires keywords to trigger the automated hiding of content behind CWs.
Also, I know just what may disturb people. The best example is eye contact. You think that eye contact can only be triggering in full-face portraits of a person looking directly at the viewer Wrong! It's triggering if there's at least one eye in the image. I've been told that some people in the autistic spectrum can detect an eye in an image if it's only a tiny fraction of a pixel. I have to expect this to extend to other potentially triggering things as well.
Thus, if it's potentially triggering and somewhere within the borders of one of my images, even if it's hardly discernible or completely invisible to the neurotypical, I still consider the whole image potentially triggering, and I treat the image and the whole post as such.
In fact, I've stopped posting potentially triggering images here on Hubzilla altogether. That's because Hubzilla has no way of making Mastodon blank an image out. And not long ago, Mastodon's CWs only hid the post text, but not the images belonging to a post. I can't rule out that certain Mastodon apps still behave this way. So I can't even use CWs to hide a triggering image. This is why I only ever post images on (streams) now: (streams) makes Mastodon blank images out when a post contains one or two certain hashtags.
Again, nobody on Mastodon goes even only nearly that far.
Please tell me in which ways exactly this is still insufficient.
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How long do electric vehicle batteries actually last : US News Hub MISRYOUM

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Near the former RFK Stadium is one big, dirty snowball. How long will it take to melt it

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Als blinde Gamerin kann ich dich das vielleicht mal fragen:
Besonders bei Screenshots aus Games oder, in meinem Fall, Renderings aus virtuellen 3-D-Welten, hast du da lieber kurze Beschreibungen, auch wenn die vieles im Unklaren lassen Oder hast du lieber detaillierte Beschreibungen, weil du ja weder sehen noch von vornherein wissen kannst, wie genau da was aussieht
Ich meine, ich gehe immer davon aus, da es da drauen irgendjemanden gibt, der blind ist, der von den virtuellen Welten, in denen ich unterwegs bin, noch nie gehrt hat, den aber dieses Thema so fasziniert, da er gern auf Entdeckungsreise durch so eine Welt per Bild gehen mchte. Da ist ja alleine schon die Erkenntnis, da virtuelle Welten mitnichten tot sind und tatschlich einige wirklich in Betrieb sind.
Dann mu ich natrlich eine hochdetaillierte Beschreibung liefern, die meine Bildposts auf eine riesige Gre aufblht. Dabei sehe ich mir aber nicht das Bild an, sondern ich gehe online und sehe mir alles direkt in der Welt vor Ort an, wo ich sehr viel mehr Details erkennen und beschreiben kann. Ein einzelnes Bild kann auch schon mal in einigen zehntausenden Zeichen beschrieben sein. Dazu kommt dann zustzlich eine krzere Beschreibung, die ich irgendwie in den Alt-Text quetschen mu, ohne 1.500 Zeichen zu berschreiten.
Zustzlich zu den Beschreibungen brauche ich ja auch noch Erklrungen. Ich kann ja nicht erwarten, da mein Publikum das alles kennt und sofort versteht, so obskur, wie die Welten sind. Ich kann auch nicht erwarten, da mein Publikum sich selbst aufschlaut, zumal ich wei, da das sowieso kaum mglich ist. Und von meinem Publikum zu erwarten, da es mich fragt, kann aus Mastodon-Sicht auch als schlechter Stil gelten. Also gehen in die lange Beschreibung in den Post auch noch Erklrungen mit rein.
Meinen persnlichen Rekord habe ich im Mai 2024 aufgestellt. Ein Bild von einem ziemlich groen, futuristischen, nicht sehr realistischen Gebude mit grozgig verglaster Fassade, durch die viel vom Innenraum sichtbar ist. Gut 60.000 Zeichen an langer Beschreibung, davon etwa 40.000 fr das Gebude nebst Innenraum. Auerdem ein Alt-Text von 1.500 Zeichen, von denen etwas ber 1.400 eine Kurzbeschreibung sind und der Rest auf die Langbeschreibung im Post hinweist. Die Langbeschreibung hat zwei Tage gebraucht, am dritten Morgen habe ich den Alt-Text geschrieben.
Ich habe mich da schon einschrnken mssen. Im Gegensatz zu frheren Gepflogenheiten habe ich keine Bilder auf dem Bild in mehr Details beschrieben, als das Bild auf dem Bild selbst zeigt.
Wrdest du sagen, das ist gerechtfertigt Oder wrdest du sagen, das ist totaler Overkill und berhaupt nicht gerechtfertigt, wenn die Wahrscheinlichkeit, da so jemand zu meinem winzigen Publikum gehrt, unendlich klein ist
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # Mir geht's da ganz hnlich. Allerdings betreibe ich pro Bild einen ziemlichen Aufwand.
Das ganze letzte Jahr ber habe ich genau zweimal Bilder gepostet. Das waren alles Memes. Da bleibt zwar die visuelle Beschreibung im Alt-Text im Rahmen, aber weil meine Memeposts immer ber extreme Nischenthemen sind, mu ich Erklrungen mitliefern. Nicht immer kann ich aber auf externe Erklrungen verlinken (wobei viele es am liebsten htten, wenn ich gar nichts verlinken und alles selbst im Post beschreiben wrde, um sich dann daran zu stren, da der Post ber 20.000 Zeichen lang ist).
Mein letzter Post mit ganz eigenen Bildern war . Da habe ich einige Stunden gebraucht fr einen Block mit langen Beschreibungen nebst Erklrungen und Transkripten von ca. 20.000 Zeichen, einen Alt-Text mit genau 1.500 Zeichen und einen mit fast 1.500 Zeichen. Jedes Bild ist zweimal beschrieben, einmal im Post, einmal im Alt-Text. Das mache ich seit Jahren bei meinen eigenen Bildern immer so.
Fr sowas habe ich aber nicht oft die Zeit und Energie. Seit Ende 2024 habe ich die Beschreibungen fr eine Reihe an einfachen Avatarportraits in der Mache. Ich habe schon absichtlich den Bildern einen einfachen weien Hintergrund gegeben, um den nicht auch noch detailliert beschreiben zu mssen. Der erste Schwung wird 67 Portraits auf 20 Bildern in wahrscheinlich 6 Posts werden, weil Mastodon nicht mehr als vier Bilder in einem Post kann.
Geschrieben habe ich bisher die Prambel fr den ersten Post mit 14.000 Zeichen an ntigen Erklrungen und 5.000 Zeichen an visueller Beschreibung fr alle Bilder gemeinsam, dazu die individuelle visuelle Beschreibung fr das erste Bild mit drei Portraits in ca. 2.500 Zeichen. Wann dieser erste Schwung fertig beschrieben ist, steht noch in den Sternen. Dann kommt noch einer mit 62 Portraits und mglicherweise noch je einer mit fnf bzw. drei.
Ehrlich gesagt habe ich schon Bilder gemacht und mich hinterher dagegen entschieden, sie zu posten, weil ich sie einfach nicht adquat htte beschreiben knnen. Lieber poste ich sie gar nicht als mit unzureichenden Beschreibungen. Andere Motive habe ich gar nicht erst im Bild festgehalten, weil ich sie nicht htte adquat beschreiben knnen.
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MinIO Is Dead, Long Live MinIO

I've learned something about alt-texts and image descriptions in the Fediverse again today: You must never talk about alt-texts and image descriptions. Ever.
Oh, sure you're allowed to give all those unsolicited lectures who don't provide alt-texts. Or alt-texts that don't describe the image. Or alt-texts that don't describe the image accurately. Or alt-texts that don't describe the image enough. Or alt-texts that don't describe the image in the right way. Just prepare to be counter-attacked for being an intrusive, mansplaining reply guy, at least in the latter three cases.
But what you must never do, under any circumstances, is attempt to discuss alt-texts and image descriptions. For that's ableist. Even if actually blind or visually-impaired Fediverse users may disagree. But since when does the Mastodon alt-text police listen to them Or, in fact, to anyone
You aren't allowed to ever ask if you're doing it right. For that's ableist, too.
You aren't even allowed to think about how to do it right. For that's ableist, too.
Just do it. Literally everything else is ableist.
Oh, but you absolutely must do it the right way. 100% by hand with no AI help whatsoever, even if you're blind or visually-impaired or autistic and unable to turn images into words. Absolutely accurately, at the right level of detail and in the right style. And you must know right off the bat what the right level of detail and the right style is. Without thinking about it.
Thing is: The Mastodon alt-text police have never agreed upon one standard level of detail, depending on the circumstances, and one standard style. Everyone of them thinks that their preferred way is the one and only gold standard, and everyone of them enforces their preferred way as if it's the one and only gold standard. All with no coordination with anyone else.
So you post an image, and you write an alt-text. Just like you think you're required to do. So far, so good.
Then comes Alice from the Mastodon alt-text police and calls you out as ableist because your image description isn't detailed enough. How dare you mention there's something in the image without describing what it looks like You're supposed to know that you have to do that!
Okay, so you edit it according to Alice's requirements.
Then comes Bob from the Mastodon alt-text police and calls you out as ableist because your image description is too long and too excessively detailed. You're supposed to know that you have to keep your alt-texts short and succinct and only describe what's important within the context of your post! Fun fact: Your original alt-text would have been too detailed for Bob, too.
Needless to say that Alice and Bob have never talked to each other. However, this is not so much due to the Fediverse-wide, Mastodon-imposed ban on discussing alt-texts and image descriptions. It's because both are on Mastodon and only on Mastodon, and Mastodon with its complete lack of support for enclosed conversations, much less groups, is absolutely horrible for discussions.
The only way to get around this is to never post any images or other media. However, if you mention at some point that you don't post images because you're afraid of uncoordinated Mastodon alt-text police attacks because one or some of them find your image descriptions not up to their personal standards, you'll probably be attacked for allegedly trying to weasel out of your responsibility.
Of course, this also means that is pointless. Not only pointless, but its very existence is ableist. And if someone else reads it, they're ableist, too. So don't click or tap that link.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # You can really put a whole lot of effort into finding the optimal description for each one of your images. You can sit down and educate yourself by reading through . You can spend hours or days or more .
You can rack your brains about
and optimise each one of your image descriptions according to your findings. You don't want to throw anyone in front of a bus by neglect, now, do you And you don't want to appear like a lazy bum, right
You can educate yourself about many rules of describing images. Like, . Or . Or . You can abide by them all.
You can hone your skills and fine-tune your image descriptions at least to near-perfection. You can spend hours or days describing one image, composing and writing it completely by hand with absolutely zero AI support.
Nobody will honour it. It feels like nobody really appreciates your effort if nobody even likes/faves your image posts.
I've done all of the above. All the way to describing each image twice over. Not often because it takes me very long to describe one measly image. I haven't posted a single fully original image since mid-2024. But whenever I do, practically nobody cares.
Granted, it doesn't help that the two channels on which I post my images nowadays (if at all), and , barely have any reach. And even if they had, most Mastodon users would be scared away by the summary/CW announcing a post that exceeds 500 characters by huge magnitudes. But my original image posts can't do without a long image description in the post text body, and even my meme posts can't do without an appropriate amount of explanations, so they have to be that long. And it feels like I've just wasted the hours or days that I've invested into researching for and writing image descriptions.
If anything at all, someone from the alt-text police will show up and attack you and call you ableist for not describing your images exactly by their personal standards. In fact, you can be called ableist by talking about image descriptions instead of just simply delivering perfect image descriptions right off the bat. By whichever definition of "perfect". But don't you dare deviate from it even only a smidge, for that'd be ableist.
Although, seriously, . But not even the alt-text police coordinate their image description quality standards, nor do they communicate them. You have to know them just like so.
What makes matters worse is that , and accessibility activists on Misskey will think you're too lazy to write an alt-text. This may apply to the various Forkeys as well.
You can't possibly write perfect image descriptions for everyone. But you have to write perfect image descriptions for everyone because everyone demands you write perfect image descriptions for them personally. Or else!
CC:
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # That's because Hubzilla has a feature called nomadic identity ().
The channel that I'm replying from, here on hub.netzgemeinde.eu, has a clone on hub.hubzilla.de. A full, live, hot, bidirectional, near-real-time backup that I can use just like the original. This is a feature that some are trying to invent right now, but that "proto-Hubzilla" has had since 2012.
Within Hubzilla, both instances of my channel count has having the exact same identity, jupiterrowlandhub.netzgemeinde.eu, and as being one thing, only that this thing exists in two places simultaneously.
However, the non-nomadic Fediverse neither knows nor understands nomadic identity. It sees the two instances of my channel as two fully separate identities. Thus, I guess lots of Mastodon users must have blocked me for having an unlabelled bot.
# # # # # # # # # # I always use a lot of hashtags. I have to. But many of my hashtags are not to increase discoverability. They're to trigger filtering, including filters that hide my content behind CW buttons. Such filters have been available on Mastodon since October, 2022 and here on Hubzilla (, , ) since its inception before Mastodon was even made.
This, by the way, is why some of my hashtags start with "CW": They're only there as content warning triggers/content warning substitutes, also because I have no means to add Mastodon-style content warnings to replies. Otherwise this comment would show the following CW on Mastodon:
CW: long (over 4,700 characters), Fediverse meta, Fediverse-beyond-Mastodon meta, hashtag meta, content warning meta, character limit meta

However, unless I explicitly talk about certain hashtags, they all always go into the last line. And I think that even 20 hashtags in the last line of one of my posts or comments make people less uncomfortable than the post or comment exceeding 500 characters or myself talking about the Fediverse, especially talking about the Fediverse not only being Mastodon.
This comment, for example, would get the following hashtags (normally in the last line, but this time I'm talking about them):
Just the other day, I found something out. Something very inconvenient about Misskey and maybe also the Forkeys.
It should be commonly known that Misskey has a local limit of 3,000 characters for posts (which it refers to as "notes"). What is not so well-known is that Misskey has a limit of about 8,000 characters, probably 8,192 or so, for inbound messages, ironically fewer than this post is long. Also, it has a limit of 512 characters for alt-text, both locally and in-bound.
Mastodon has a character limit for in-bound content, too, at least for Note-type objects (not for Article-type objects because it refuses to render them fully and links to the original instead). To my best knowledge, it rejects messages with over 100,000 characters. As for its 1,500-charater limit for alt-text, it enforces that by truncating alt-text that's longer.
Misskey, in contrast, truncates everything that exceeds its limits while still letting it in. If your post is longer than the inbound limit of ca. 8,000, all excess characters are chopped off and thrown away. If your alt-text is longer than 512 characters, all excess characters are chopped off and thrown away.
I don't know which Forkey behaves how in this regard, seeing as all Forkeys I know about have a configurable local post character limit that can be adjusted to well over 8,000. But even if the inbound limit is configurable, too, I don't think any *key admin cranks it over 60,000 or over 70,000 or over 100,000. It's simply unimaginable that someone, anyone, could ever post that much at once if your idea of the Fediverse is pure microblogging.
Also, I don't know what *key users do when they come across a truncated post or what blind or visually-impaired *key users do when they come across a truncated alt-text. Do they even suspect that it's a truncated copy of something that's longer at its source and then go check the source Either way, it's very inconvenient.
It's especially inconvenient for me. My longest posts by a gigantic margin are image posts with original images. They always have a long image description block in the post itself that tends to be tens of thousands of characters long. It contains highly detailed visual descriptions of all images in the post. It contains all explanations necessary to understand the post, the images and the descriptions. It contains verbatim transcripts of all bits of text within the borders of the image that I can read, no matter whether or not my audience can.
In addition, each image has a shorter description in the alt-text, along with a bit that announces the long description, including where to find it. I even used to explain how to get to that description for Mastodon users for whom the summary and content warning hides the post text, but not the images, depending on which Mastodon version and frontend they use. This alone took up several hundred characters in the alt-text. All in all, I got to a point in which my alt-texts always ended up either at precisely 1,500 characters or just a few characters short.
I myself am not really bound to character limits. I used to post images here on Hubzilla where I have over 16.7 million characters for the post, including all alt-texts. Now I post them on (streams) where I have over 24 million characters. I could theoretically write alt-texts as long as I want to, seeing as, unlike on Mastodon, they aren't separate text fields instead, they're being woven into the image-embedding markup code in the post text.
Still, I stick to a maximum of 1,500 characters for alt-text to keep Mastodon from truncating it. If you post images into the Fediverse, the main audience for your alt-text is on Mastodon, and most of them don't understand that there's something, anything, out there in the Fediverse that does not work exactly like Mastodon. And 1,500 characters can be tight already.
But if I have to stay within Misskey's limits, I can hardly post images anymore. At least not with appropriate descriptions and explanations.
Since late 2024, I have been working on-and-off on a series of fairly simple avatar portraits or rather their image descriptions. The idea is for the long description to consist of a preamble that starts with a general summary, followed by explanations, then followed by visual descriptions of what all images in the post have in common. Next come the individual descriptions of each image. Each post shall have three or four images with three or four portraits each, all in the same pose, all with only minor differences in outfits, all with a neutral, bright white background.
In addition, of course, each image shall have an alt-text, and none of the alt-texts shall depend on each other.
Now, the problem is that I have to describe three or four individual portraits in each alt-text. I'm actually struggling to squeeze such a description plus the note that announces the long description into 1,500 characters, especially if I want to fulfill Veronica Lewis a.k.a. Veronica With Four Eyes' requirements for outfit descriptions to a tee in the alt-text as well (, see also and ).
But in 512 characters so that even Misskey users won't get a severely truncated version This is absolutely impossible. Even if I limit the long description announcement to some 100 characters, even if I didn't walk people through how to get to the long description, I'd have fewer than 140 characters on average to describe each individual outfit.
The long description won't fare any better. Currently, the preamble starts with some 14,000 characters of explanations, most of which are necessary to understand the visual descriptions. But when Misskey goes and truncates the post at the 8,000-something mark, Misskey users won't even get to any visual description because all visual descriptions would be chopped off.
What makes matters worse is that the preamble grows the longer, the easier to understand I make it and the less I leave people with unexplained technical or jargon terms which you shouldn't use in image descriptions at all anyway. So the next time I go through it and rewrite it to make it easier to understand, I'll also make it even longer than it already is.
But what if I simply cut all the explanations For one, I'd leave people to their own devices to understand extremely obscure niche content. They won't. My explanations aren't 14,000 characters long because I've artificially inflated them, but because there is so much to know before you understand the post and the images and the descriptions.
Besides, the visual descriptions alone won't fit into 8,192 characters either. What I currently have is over 5,000 characters of common visual description for all portraits in all images plus about 2,500 characters of individual visual description for the three portraits in the first image. That's over 7,500 characters altogether already. And I still have to describe nine portraits in another three images. The post will end up with some 15,000 characters of visual descriptions unless they grow longer when I simplify them again.
I guess users of Misskey or any Forkey will still have to put up with truncated alt-texts and truncated long descriptions in the future. But my future image posts will contain a paragraph at the beginning that explains that the post and/or the alt-text may be truncated on Misskey and the Forkeys, and that both are uncut at the source. Still, this means that *key users will have to put up with the extra hassle of opening my original post at a source with a quite cumbersome UI. And I've got my doubts that this UI is really accessible.
Unfortunately, this also means that *key users won't get any hashtags along with these posts. But then again, the handling of Identi.ca-style/Friendica-style hashtags with the number sign outside the link is broken on all *keys and will remain so for the foreseeable future.
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there goes the annie

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Last updated: 2026-03-07






UNITED-STATES?