The J. Arthur Keenes Band Overcoat
OpenSim user for five years here.
Little nitpick: OSgrid is not "the OpenSim grid". It is not even "the official OpenSim grid". There is no such thing as an official OpenSim grid, only 4,000+ big and small grids that are independent from both each other and OpenSim's development.
In fact, OpenSim, that's five spare-time hobbyists, a wiki, a code repository and a bug tracker. Nothing more. Everything else is third-party.
OSgrid was the first public grid. It's the oldest grid, 18 years next month. And it's probably the only major grid that runs vanilla code so that the OpenSim devs can debug their development code under regular conditions. AFAIK, the other big grids all run forks. In fact, OSgrid isn't even the biggest grid anymore. While it's bigger than Second Life, the Wolf Territories Grid is bigger than both.
If you want to know more, your blog post was the perfect opportunity for me to finally write that I had planned for a while now.
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I actually keep entire categories of things out of my images because I can't describe them up to my own standards. This includes realistic buildings. I would first have to look up loads of architectural terms to describe all details of a building, and then I would have to explain each and every one of these architectural buildings in a way that absolute laypeople understand my image description without ever having to ask me anything or look anything up themselves.
The last time I posted an image with a building was . I actually went around and looked for a nice motive for a new image post for quite a while. There was one harbour scene which I thought looked spectacular enough to show, but which was impossible to describe. So I fell back to this motive. I thought it's not too bland, not too simple and at the same time not too complex. Besides, the one building in the image is totally unrealistic and without all the tiny details that would make up a realistic building.
And then I ended up taking some 30 hours over two days to describe the image in over 60,000 characters. The building alone took up some 40,000 or so. This is still the longest image description in the whole Fediverse, I think.
My last image post before that was with still over 25,000 characters of description for one image, and I consider it outdated slop.
It was the last time that I described an image in my image with more details than visible in the original of that image itself. And that's where I got sloppy. I completely forgot to transcribe what's written on the license plate above the office door of the motel in that image in my image. And I couldn't be bothered to give detailed descriptions of the two 1957 Chevy Bel Airs parked in front of the motel because I really wanted to get that description done. In the actual image, all of this is sub-pixel-sized. You wouldn't know it's even there if I didn't mention it. I did describe the motel, but it's a fairly simple building, and I decided against describing what's visible through the windows with open blinds from the camera angle in the image in my image.
In the next image, the one with 60,000+ characters of description, I stopped describing images in the image beyond what I can see in the place where the image itself was taken. That was because one image is a destination preview image on a teleporter. The destination is a kind of teleport hub. The preview actually (if only barely so) shows over 300 single-destination teleporters, a few dozen of them with their own preview images.
So I teleported to that hub to describe it in detail. And I looked at the teleporters and their preview images. Turned out, not only do these preview images pretty much all have text in them and not necessarily few bits of text, but some of them actually have images within themselves again.
I would have had to describe that image in my image, dozens of images in that image in my image and a number of images in these images in that image in my image. For each of the latter, I would have had to teleport three times from the place that I originally wanted to describe. I would also have had a whole lot more text to transcribe. All on a sub-pixel scale several times over.
Not only would that have been a humongous task, but more importantly, it would have inflated my image description and my whole post to more than 100,000 characters. Mastodon would probably have rejected my post for being too long. And this would have rendered the whole effort futile. In the few places in the Fediverse that would still have accepted my post, nobody cares for image descriptions.
I've only used AI to describe images twice. And in both cases, that was to show just how bad AI is at describing images about an extremely obscure and quickly changing niche topic at the level of accuracy and detail which I deem necessary for that topic.
I guess one problem that you're facing is that next to nobody in the Fediverse can even grasp what you're thinking about, what you're taking into consideration for your image descriptions. That's why you got next to no feedback upon your first comment in this thread.
I have one advantage here: What you're pondering, I have actually done. If I feel like people won't understand what I'm thinking about, I point them at one or several of my actual image posts, and/or I post a quote from one of my actual image descriptions. Still, almost nobody actually goes and reads through any of my image descriptions, but I guess they get the gist, especially when I post snippets from my actual descriptions.
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# # # # # # # # # # # Just for me to be on the safe side: What are your minimum requirements for alt-texts and image descriptions so you refrain from sanctioning a user
Full, to-the-point adherence to , the , etc., even though they contradict each other
Do you demand image descriptions be detailed and informative enough so that nobody will ever have to ask the poster about explanations and/or details because they're all already in the descriptions, no matter how niche and obscure the content of the image is
If there is already a lengthy image description in the post itself (imagine all character limits you know in the Fediverse it's longer than all of them by magnitudes), do you still demand there be another description in the alt-text, even though the alt-text actually points the user to the description in the post, because there absolutely must be a sufficiently detailed and accurate image description in the alt-text, full stop
In fact, do you sanction image descriptions in general or alt-texts in particular if you think they are too long For example, if you stumble upon an image post from me that has a "short" image description of 1,400 characters in the alt-text and a "long" image description of over 60,000 characters in the post itself (and I've actually posted such a thing into the Fediverse ), will you demand I discard two days and some 30 hours of work, delete the long description and cut the short description down to no more than 200 characters Maybe even while still retaining the same amount of information Lest you have me dogpiled and mass-blocked or worse
By the way, , and .
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First of all, your link is behind a paywall.
Next, I hope you don't honestly think that only two virtual worlds systems were ever made, Second Life and "The Metaverse" which many think is the official and trademarked name of Meta Horizon (very early on Facebook Horizon, a.k.a. "Meta Metaverse", "Facebook Metaverse" or "Zuckerberg's Metaverse").
On a sidenote: The community has been using the term "metaverse" for actually existing virtual worlds in its standard jargon since 2007, the year that OpenSim was first released. 14 years longer than Zuckerberg. In particular, , the first public OpenSim grid, the oldest OpenSim grid and until fairly recently the biggest one, has officially labelled itself "The Open Source Metaverse" since 2007. Also, there are things like the which resides in , another OpenSim grid, the which focuses on and is based in OpenSim, too, and entire grids like the . All of them predate both Zuckerberg's 2021 Metaverse announcement and the 2022/2023 Metaverse hype.
While the big Second Life hype was from 2007 to late 2008, it hasn't entirely faded into obscurity. And academics and psychologists aren't that big a part of its user base. Many Second Life users have stuck around since the late 2000s or 2010s, and most are hobbyists.
If you want an insight into Second Life without actually spending lots of time there, check Wagner James "Hamlet" Au's blog . He also covers other virtual worlds from VRChat to Horizon.
As I can't read your blog post, I do hope you've written it from the perspective of someone who actually knows a few things about Second Life, such as that it's constantly evolving, and that it's the one virtual world that's the closest in looks to Cyberpunk 2077, now that physically-based rendering is spreading. And not from the perspective of someone who only very recently discovered that Second Life was, surprisingly, not shut down in late 2008 or early 2009, and who thinks it still looks the same as back then.
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Not at all.
One advantage is, as you've said, that the backend and the Web frontend can have their own developers, development of both can largely be detached, and they can be upgraded separately from one another.
Separate Web frontends can be developed by people who actually know a thing or two about frontend development and UI design. I mean, look at the Web UIs of some all-in-one Fediverse server applications. They're often the digital counterpart of random knobs and switches poked through a piece of cardboard and labelled with a ball pen, just so that these knobs and switches are there. Sometimes they're the equivalent of expecting all kinds of end users to operate DIP switches, but hey, they're still better than soldering and unsoldering wires.
Another advantage is that server software for which alternative frontends exist does not have to drag its default frontend around. There are Mastodon servers with alternative frontends, but they still have to have the two official Web UIs installed (the default one and the Tweetdeck-style one) because they're firmly welded to the backend. I guess we all know what a heavyweight Mastodon is, and I'm certain that part of the weight is caused by the built-in Web UIs. In stark contrast, you can set up an Akkoma server with Mangane instead of Akkoma-FE, as in without having to also install Akkoma-FE.
By the way, Hubzilla is an interesting case here. Not only is its default UI very configurable, but Hubzilla itself is highly themeable, and third-party themes almost amount to entirely new UIs. At the same time, however, practically all official development efforts went only into the backend for most of its existence.
Any Hubzilla UI has to wrestle an immense wealth of features, and not exactly new features were added over time. This, however, caused Hubzilla's UI to gradually turn into a jumbled mess because some of the new UI elements were seemingly added in totally random places. Not only was the UI never cleaned up, but the default theme is perpetually stuck in 2012 (the name "Redbasic" says it all, it was made for Hubzilla when Hubzilla was still named Red), it was derived from an early Friendica theme, and even Friendica wasn't pretty back then. Also, the documentation was completely neglected.
So the situation last year was that there was only one working Hubzilla theme left, and that was Redbasic. It was the only theme that was even only upgraded to work with newer Hubzilla versions. There used to be other official themes, but they eventually ended up so outdated that they were removed altogether. 's third-party themes were last touched seven years ago, that must have been around the time when Hubzilla 3 came out. At the same time, the official documentation was not only highly incomplete, but it was so outdated that parts of it were simply false. It partly referred to features that had been axed many years ago (tech levels) and features that simply were never there (four different mention styles), and parts of it even still spoke of Red. Thus, nobody even knew how to develop new themes for current Hubzilla.
That was when the community stepped in. sat down and . not only started working on his , but in the same process, he reverse-engineered Hubzilla's theming system to write documentation for theming Hubzilla which had never been written before AFAIK. Around that time, was dabbling with specialised themes for certain purposes, e.g. one very clean theme for Hubzilla channels used as long-form blogs. Later on, joined the fray with his now-popular .
Granted, Hubzilla still carries Redbasic around, not only as the default for new channels unless the admin chooses another one, but also as a fallback in case a new Hubzilla version doesn't support existing third-party themes anymore. The latter is becoming less likely as the Utsukta themes are being built against Hubzilla's development versions now. Besides, it's in Hubzilla's nature that everything on a hub is updated at the same time, including third-party repositories.
In general, the Hubzilla community is no longer that easily satisfied with a UI that "just works", and the devs have taken notice. Hubzilla 10.4, now a release candidate, will spruce up certain core parts of the UI. It will introduce a tree-style thread view as the new default instead of its current chronological view, something that Friendica, (streams) and Forte have had for significantly longer. That is, this is actually a side-effect of the introduction of "lazy loading" conversations to reduce the server workload. Also, upon user request, it will add a button to add images to comments.
If (streams) and Forte grow bigger, the same could happen there. They have two official themes to choose from, fairly new Fresh and an older version of Redbasic. However, they don't have a large enough community for all the same things to happen to them that happened to Hubzilla, although Pepe has said he'd rewrite the (streams) and Forte help as well, seeing as Mike had ripped them out entirely with no replacements as they were too outdated at that point. Maybe someone will even write a guide on how to adapt Hubzilla themes to (streams) and Forte.
That is, (streams) and Forte are both already the result of several years of UI and UX advancement and improvements and making them fit for a Mastodon-dominated Fediverse (where Hubzilla is still geared towards a Fediverse which it will dominate itself by the mid-to-late 2010s). This is stuff which can't be taken care of in themes because it concerns the UI engine itself, and it's partly tied deeply into the backend.
While Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte won't be able to do without their official themes anytime soon, the official themes don't significantly weigh them down. Still, they require some maintenance work to keep up with the backend.
This makes me wonder which half Mastodon would be willing to outsource. I think they'd rather hold on to the backend and pass all the frontends on. Of course, this would come with the advantage of the official Mastodon mobile app actually becoming somewhat decent rather than remaining the "we need an official app, no matter how" kluge that it is today.
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It belongs to the group of long-horned beetles, also known as cerambycids (family Cerambycidae). They are a diverse group of beetles characterized by their long antennae, often longer than their bodies, hence their name.
-horned Beetles It's similar for me, only that I always put a gigantic effort into describing my own images twice, once not exactly briefly in the alt-text and once with even more details in the post itself. Sometimes I find an interesting motive, but when I start thinking about how to describe it, I don't even render an image because it isn't worth doing so if I can't post it.
I haven't posted a new image in almost a year. In fact, I've got a series of fairly simple images for which I've started writing the descriptions late last year, and I'm still not done. So much about "it only takes a few seconds".
Before someone suggests I could use Altbot: I'm not even sure if it'll work with Hubzilla posts. And besides, no AI on this planet is fit for the task of properly, appropriately and accurately describing the kind of images that I post.
And then there's me who has managed to describe one image in a bit over ten thousand words last year. Good thing I have a post character limit of over 16.7 million. And I actually limited myself this time: I did not describe images within my image in detail, in stark contrast to about two years ago when I described a barely visible image in an image in well over 4,000 characters of its own, and that wasn't the only image within that image that I described.
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# # # # # # # # # # # So Pleroma and Akkoma (which, for some reason, is missing from the list) actually use the ActivityPub C2S API to connect their frontends Even though Pleroma predates ActivityPub and started out as an alternative GNU social frontend, much like Mastodon
I mean, they're famous for having separate repositories for the server and the Web frontend (same name with "-FE" attached). And they're equally famous for having servers that forgo the official frontend in favour of third-party stuff, most notably Mangane.
So if Mangane actually makes use of that API rather than a homebrew *oma client API, it could be used as or, if need be, modified into a sparrings partner for API-testing purposes, not to mention that it's living proof that the API actually works. As it integrates with Pleroma and Akkoma that well, I've got my doubts that it only uses the Mastodon client API.
In the cases of (streams) and Forte which are almost the same software save for protocol support, the Web UI is much closer to the server backend, as flexible and modifyable it is. In their cases, the question would be whether they could be used to test just how far feature support in the ActivityPub C2S API can possibly go, maybe even whether it'd be possible to use the ActivityPub C2S API to build an almost fully-featured (streams)/Forte client app (except, of course, Web UI configuration and (streams)' per-channel ActivityPub switch which might cut the whole app off the server).
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# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # First of all: You must never put line breaks into alt-text. Ever. (, )
Besides, that will certainly not be the day that I'll post my first image after more than a year.
It's tedious enough to properly describe my original images at the necessary level of detail, and one image takes me many hours to describe, sometimes up to two full days, morning to evening. Not joking here. I certainly won't put extra effort into turning at least the 900 characters of "short" description that go into the alt-text into a poem. And I definitely will not also turn the additional 20,000, 40,000, 60,000 characters of long description that go into the post into a poem as well. (And yes, I can post 60,000+ characters in one go, and I have done so in the past. My character limit is 16,777,215.)
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In deinem vorigen Kommentar hast du selbst geschrieben, und ich zitiere wrtlich:
Das heit fr mich: Die Leute sollen gar nicht erst fragen mssen. Die sollen gar nichts fragen mssen. Alles, was sie an Informationen brauchen, egal, wieviele und welche das sind, mu sofort im Bildpost zusammen mit dem Bild mitgeliefert werden.
Das habe ich wirklich schon oft genug versucht siehe . Und oft genug poste ich auch noch in zwei Guppe Groups.
Erfolg: minimal. Auf die meisten Posts gab es absolut berhaupt keine Reaktionen. Manchmal gab es einen Like oder vielleicht zwei. Selbst wiederholt/geboostet wurde beinahe keiner davon jemals. Antworten kamen oft genug von Leuten, die gar nicht verstanden, was ich eigentlich wollte, so etwa von Hubzilla, wo die Idee der Barrierefreiheit und Inklusion bis heute nicht angekommen ist und Alt-Texte teilweise als "noch so'n dummer Mastodon-Tick" wahrgenommen werden, weit berwiegend aber genau wie die Mastodon-Kultur allgemein komplett unbekannt sind.
Ich hatte Abstimmungen mit weniger Teilnehmern als Optionen.
Das einzige Mal, wo wirklich mal mehrere tatschlich Blinde auf so einen Post geantwortet haben, war . Und das auch nur, weil ich tatschlich einen ganzen Haufen blinder Aktivisten im Fediverse persnlich erwhnt habe.
Die Hrden sind vielfltig.
Letztlich mte ich auch nicht nur Blinde und Sehbehinderte ins Boot holen, sondern auch die Mastodon HOA und deren Alt-Text-Polizei. Der geht es ja lngst nicht mehr darum, da berhaupt eine Bildbeschreibung da ist, sondern die schraubt kontinuierlich die Mindestkriterien fr akzeptable Bildbeschreibung nach oben. Und da will ich auch wissen, ob ich deren Segen habe, denn die entscheidet letzten Endes darber, wieviel Reichweite ich haben darf.
Und dann wird sich als Problem rausstellen, da ich der einzige in der ganzen Diskussion bin, der nicht auf Mastodon ist, und somit der einzige, der den ganzen Thread einsehen kann. Die anderen sehen voneinander die Kommentare nicht, und so gehen sie aufeinander nicht ein und diskutieren nicht miteinander, sondern nur mit mir. Sie werden gegenstzliche Vorstellungen haben, aber nichts auch nur davon ahnen, geschweige denn bemerken. Das wird dann also keine konstruktive Diskussion sein.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # Still, the headbutting was often justified for Mike. Unless, of course, you say that Mastodon is and has always been the one and only Fediverse gold standard and the one and only ActivityPub reference implementation.
I'll give you an example: In July, 2017, Mike's Hubzilla was the very first Fediverse server software to implement ActivityPub. Mike played strictly by the rules. As Hubzilla has a character limit of over 16.7 million and supports text formatting on the same level as the best long-form blogging platforms out there, he declared Hubzilla long-form and made Hubzilla send Article-type objects. Just as the spec demands.
In September, Mastodon became the second Fediverse server software to implement ActivityPub. But Gargron did not play by the rules. He only implemented a tiny subset of the protocol, namely what suited him. And he also broke it: Mastodon could display Article-type objects at their full length. But Gargron staunchly refused to implement any support for anything that goes beyond plain text. The ActivityPub spec explicitly says that Article-type objects are formatted. But Gargron wanted Mastodon to be a purist, minimalist, old-school, original-gangsta, Twitter-cloning microblogging platform. And stuff like bold type, italics, headlines, embedded in-line images or titles aren't purist, minimalist, old-school, original-gangsta, Twitter-cloning microblogging.
And so Mastodon took fully formatted, long-form-blog-style posts from Hubzilla and ripped everything out that wasn't plain text. It basically defaced Hubzilla posts. That is, it had been defacing Friendica and Hubzilla posts all the same ever since it was launched. But this time, there was a spec that actually defined what Mastodon was doing as wrong. And that spec had been finalised and pronounced a W3C standard meanwhile.
So Mike asked Gargron to please follow the official ActivityPub spec and make Mastodon support full HTML rendering for Article-type objects.
Gargron refused. Old-skool microblogging is plain text and only plain text, full stop.
This went back and forth. Eventually, Gargron presented a "solution": Mastodon now "renders" Article-type objects by showing the title and, right below, a link to the original. That is, basically not at all anymore. Of course, this meant that the vast majority of Mastodon users no longer read what came from Friendica and Hubzilla because they couldn't be bothered to open that link.
Mike saw this as a direct assault against Friendica and Hubzilla and an attempt at excluding both from "the Fediverse" which was almost entirely Mastodon at that point already. So he himself had to break the spec and make Hubzilla send Note-type objects instead so that Mastodon renders them at all. It still defaces them to this day.
(Friendica's solution was to send an Article-type object when a post has a title and a Note-type object when it doesn't have a title. Optionally, it can always send Note-type objects.)
By the way: This very same head-butting has returned. Not between Gargron and Mike, though, but between Gargron and much bigger players. Platforms like Flipboard and Ghost have introduced ActivityPub, and they send Article-type objects just as the ActivityPub spec demands. The same goes for WordPress. And, of course, they don't send plain-text "long tweets". They send fully formatted news articles and blog posts.
And now they demand Mastodon, as the biggest player in the Fediverse by user count, make their Article-type objects look just like they look at the source. They demand Mastodon not only render bold type, italics, headlines and the rest of the subset of text formatting that was introduced with Mastodon 4 in October, 2022. They also demand Mastodon show the titles and, most importantly, leave the images embedded within the articles in place, no matter how many they are.
This is no longer Gargron and his devs vs a guy in the Australian outback. This is Gargron and his devs who try hard to bend the Fediverse to their will and assume supreme control over it vs the Ghost Foundation, Flipboard, Inc. and Automattic, Inc. that play strictly by the ActivityPub rules. And I dare say that Automattic, Inc. alone has more money and more market power than Mastodon gGmbH and Mastodon, Inc. combined.
Mastodon has always gotten away with ignoring and breaking standards, re-inventing wheels and implying towards its religious followers that the whole Fediverse was built upon Mastodon and around Mastodon, and that everything that does things differently from Mastodon is inherently a broken add-on to Mastodon or an evil intruder. This time, they won't. And I guess they've actually taken it into consideration.
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Mglich ist es durchaus, und ich mache es stndig. Das glaubt mir zwar keiner, und niemand kann sich vorstellen, wie ich das mache, aber ich mache es.
Darauf kann ich mich bei meinen Bildern nicht verlassen.
Wie gesagt: Fr die allermeisten Menschen da drauen ist das ein ganz neues unbekanntes Universum. Dazu kommen zwei Erkenntnisse. Zum einen: "Das Metaverse" ist gar nicht tot, wenn ich Bilder aus virtuellen 3-D-Welten zeigen kann. Zum anderen, wobei das nur Sehende betrifft: Was ich da zeige, sieht tausendmal besser aus als alles, was Zuckerberg so geteaset hat. Womglich htte derjenige nie damit gerechnet, da "das Metaverse" so aussehen kann.
Ich mu immer damit rechnen, da genau deshalb irgendjemand da drauen sich vor Aufregung und Neugierde kaum halten kann. Guckt der sich dann nur das an, was im Postkontext wichtig ist Mitnichten! Der nimmt all die groen und kleinen Details in Augenschein. Relevant oder nicht, das ist alles aufregend.
So, und dieselbe Chance, genau das zu tun, also all die groen und kleinen Details zu erfassen, egal, ob sie relevant sind oder nicht, mssen auch Blinde und Sehbehinderte haben. So definiert sich Barrierefreiheit, so definiert sich Inklusion.
Und genau deswegen serviere ich alle Erklrungen und Beschreibungen, von denen ich glaube, da irgendjemand da drauen sie haben will, direktweg im Bildpost auf einem Silbertablett. Egal, wie weit ich ausholen mu.
Gut, das fhrt auch schon mal dazu, da ich mehr als 1000 Zeichen alleine brauche, um zu erklren, wo ein Bild gemacht wurde, weil ich sogar Erklrungen und Erklrungen von Erklrungen erklren darf.
Seit Ende letzten Jahres (!) arbeite ich immer mal wieder an den Beschreibungen fr eine Serie von Avatarportraits mit neutral-weiem Hintergrund. Ich habe also wirklich nur den Avatar zu beschreiben, denn das ist immer derselbe in immer derselben Pose. Bevor ich aber den Avatar beschreiben kann, brauche ich Erklrungen, damit die visuellen Beschreibungen berhaupt verstanden werden knnen. Das heit knapp 2000 Zeichen an Erklrungen, was das eigentlich fr ein Virtuelle-Welten-System ist, noch einmal an die 600 Zeichen, um den Aufnahmeort zu erklren (wo dann zumindest der weie Hintergrund erwhnt wird), und dann ber 9000 Zeichen, um zu erklren, wie in diesen Welten Avatare aufgebaut sind und funktionieren.
Das ist eben das Problem, das ich dadurch habe, da ich keine Real-Life-Fotos poste, sondern Bilder aus virtuellen Welten: Darber wei niemand irgendwas. Von 200.000 Fediverse-Nutzern wei einer auch nur, da es das Virtuelle-Welten-System, das ich nutze, auch nur gibt. Ansonsten mu ich alles bis auf die Grundlagen erklren.
Und blinde oder sehbehinderte Menschen wissen nicht, wie irgendetwas in diesen Welten aussieht. Woher sollen die das auch wissen Wenn ich also erwhne, was auf einem Bild ist, dann mu ich immer davon ausgehen, da jemand Blindes oder Sehbehindertes sich selbst oder mich fragt: "Okay, aber wie sieht das aus Wieso beschreibst du nicht direktweg, wie das aussieht"
Es gibt ja durchaus auch immer wieder Sachen auf meinen Bildern, die es in der realen Welt nicht gibt. Und die mu ich fr Blinde, Sehbehinderte und Sehende erklren, weil die nicht wissen, was das ist, und fr Blinde und Sehbehinderte visuell beschreiben, weil die nicht wissen, wie so etwas aussieht.
Ich knnte beispielsweise schreiben (ich poste normalerweise auf Englisch):
Weit du, was ein OpenSimWorld-Beacon ist, was der macht, wofr der da ist Weit du, wie ein OpenSimWorld-Beacon aussieht
Weit du wahrscheinlich alles nicht. Wei annhernd niemand da drauen.
Also schreibe ich lieber das hier (und das ist ein Ausschnitt aus einer tatschlichen Langbeschreibung in ):
Und auch das wrde nicht funktionieren, htte ich nicht am Anfang der Langbeschreibung erklrt:
Insgesamt ist diese Langbeschreibung brigens ber 25.000 Zeichen lang. Und das ist nicht mal eine meiner lngsten.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # Na ja, Kunst ist es nicht. Die Bilder sind illustrativ oder informativ oder beides, manchmal auch unterhaltsam.
Aber warum auch immer ich sie poste, ich rechne immer damit, da jemandem der Kontext komplett schnuppe ist. Immerhin sind das Bilder aus einer vllig unbekannten Welt, ganz zu schweigen vom bildlichen Beweis, da vllig unerwarteterweise virtuelle 3-D-Welten eben nicht tot sind. Dann wird sich nicht nur angeguckt, was im Kontext wichtig ist, sondern dann wird auf Entdeckungsreise gegangen und sich alles angeguckt, je nachdem, wie detailliert das Motiv ist.
Na ja, und Barrierefreiheit und Inklusion bedeutet ja letztlich, da Blinde oder Sehbehinderte exakt dieselben Chancen haben mssen, exakt dieselben Dinge zu tun wie Sehende. Das heit, sie mssen auch die Chancen haben, meine Bilder genau so zu erleben wie Sehende, egal, wie Sehende sie erleben. Alles andere wre ableistisch.
Allerdings beschreibe ich meine Bilder unabhngig von der Bildauflsung. Ich schreibe also nicht, was ich auf dem Bild sehe, sondern, was ich in-world sehe. Und da sehe ich alles mit einer sehr viel hheren Auflsung und kann auch mal an Hindernissen vorbeigucken.
Zum einen kann ich nicht davon ausgehen, da alle, die blind geboren wurden, ein Konzept von Bildauflsung haben. Wenn ich dann schreibe, da das Bild zu gering aufgelst ist, um an einer Stelle mehr Details zu zeigen, dann fhlt sich das immer an, als wollte ich mich aus der Affre ziehen. Also wird auch schon mal ein Erdbeercocktail als Erdbeercocktail beschrieben, auch wenn er im Bild selbst nur in Form von vier Pixeln zu sehen ist.
Zum anderen gibt es die Regel, da alles an Text in einem Bild wortwrtlich zu transkribieren ist. Als diese Regel aufgestellt wurde, wurde dabei allerdings nur an so Sachen wie abfotografierte Poster oder Screenshots von Social-Media-Posts gedacht. Das heit, es gibt keine Klausel darber, wie mit Text zu verfahren ist, der im Bild nicht lesbar ist, von dem, wer auch immer das Bild beschreibt, aber ganz genau wei oder in Erfahrung bringen kann, was da geschrieben steht.
Folglich mu ich die Regel so auffassen, da alles, was sich innerhalb der Umgrenzungen des Bildes befindet und auf irgendeine Art Text ist, transkribiert werden mu. Dann werden auch schon mal 20, 30 oder mehr einzelne Textschnipsel transkribiert und ggf. hinterher noch bersetzt, von denen dann nur zwei, drei einzelne Grobuchstaben wirklich lesbar sind. Auch wenn einiges an Text so winzig ist, da es schon der Bildbeschreibung bedarf, um berhaupt zu wissen, wo diese Textschnipsel eigentlich auf dem Bild sein sollen, werden sie trotzdem transkribiert.
Eigentlich ist das einfach nur stures Einhalten von Regeln, ohne ihre Anwendbarkeit zu hinterfragen. Aber weil gerade auch auf Mastodon gern auch Sehende Bildbeschreibungen lesen (wenn sie die Geduld haben), knnen auch sie von den Transkripten profitieren, weil nicht einmal das beste Adlerauge diese Textschnipsel lesen kann.
Letztlich habe ich hier die Erfahrung gemacht: Frag Mastodon-Nutzer, ob sie Zusatzinformationen lieber sich selbst raussuchen, aus verlinkten externen Quellen beziehen oder direkt im Post bekommen wollen. Dann werden sie nach meiner Erfahrung das Letztere bevorzugen. Also werden sie es auch bekommen.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # Meine eigenen Bilder sollten eigentlich fr Blinde und Sehbehinderte auch nicht von Interesse sein. Das ganze Thema sollte sie nicht interessieren, weil es ein sehr visuelles Thema ist. Es sind nmlich Renderings aus sehr obskuren virtuellen 3-D-Welten.
Trotzdem betreibe ich einen riesengroen Aufwand, um meine Bilder zu beschreiben, um auch wirklich jeden auf jedem Wissensstand abzuholen, damit auch wirklich jeder meine Bilderposts und meine Bildbeschreibungen versteht, ohne noch irgendwas googlen oder mich irgendwas fragen zu mssen. Ich will, da Blinde und Sehbehinderte meine Bilder mindestens so gut erleben knnen wie Sehende, und zwar egal, wie Sehende sie erleben, egal, was Sehende sich in meinen Bildern wie genau ansehen.
Meine Zielgruppe fr meine Bilder und meine Bildbeschreibungen umfat jeden, der zufllig ber meine Bilderposts stolpert. Und ich will, da jeder ohne fremde Hilfe mit meinen Bildern und mit meinen Bilderposts sofort zurechtkommt. Und so habe ich auch schon mal zwei volle Tage von morgens bis abends gebraucht, um ein einziges lumpiges Bild zu beschreiben.
Einige sagen: "Irgendwas ist besser als gar nichts." Aber nicht jeder sagt das. Andere Leute pochen nmlich auf grtmgliche Qualitt, sehr hohen Detailgrad und das perfekte Einhalten aller Regeln fr Bildbeschreibungen und Alt-Texte.
Problematisch wird es fr mich, wenn es darum geht, ausnahmslos jedes Bild 100% barrierefrei zugnglich fr ausnahmslos jeden Nutzer da drauen zu machen. Einerseits gibt's Leute, die mit lngeren Beschreibungen nicht klarkommen. Andererseits gibt's Leute, die sehr umfassende Erklrungen brauchen und sich die nicht zusammensuchen wollen. Und Informationen auerhalb des Post, in dem das Bild ist, sind mglicherweise zu schwer zugnglich, also mssen alle Informationen in den einen Post rein. Ich kann aber den vollen Informationsgrad von ber 60.000 Zeichen (und ja, ich habe schon mal ein Bild mit ber 60.000 Zeichen beschrieben) nicht auf maximal 200 Zeichen eindampfen.
Deswegen hatte ich schon die Vermutung, da es schlicht und ergreifend Bilder gibt, die an und fr sich nicht barrierefrei sind, weil es unmglich ist, sie perfekt barrierefrei zugnglich fr absolut jeden zu schreiben. Wenn dem so wre, drften solche Bilder nicht ins Fediverse gepostet werden, jedenfalls nicht so, da sie irgendjemanden auf Mastodon erreichen knnten.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # Today's screen readers no longer have any alt-text character limits anymore. Anything that claims that screen readers are limited to 80 or 125 or 200 characters per alt-text is hopelessly outdated. And as rarely as I post images, I keep getting away with nearly or exactly 1,500 characters, at least ca. 900 of which are actual description.
And I hardly ever get any feedback myself, especially not from those who actually use and need screen readers. But I could really use occasional feedback. For one, that's because I post extremely obscure niche material that's unlike anything you'll ever come across, and I'm basically the first Fediverse user ever to put some thoughts into how to properly describe this kind of image.
Besides, that's because I need to know if my combination of "short" image descriptions in fairly long alt-texts plus "long" image descriptions of tens of thousands of characters in the post itself with all necessary explanations and transcripts of all text is an appropriate way of describing the kind of images that I post. I mean, I'm probably the only one in the Fediverse who writes image descriptions so long that they need two levels of headlines.
The last time I got negative feedback was from a fully sighted user who probably wanted the whole Fediverse to be no more than 500 characters anywhere. Blind or visually-impaired users only give feedback if I ask them personally, and I point them at one or several of my image posts, and not even then always.
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It's rather partially about the bragging rights.
But first and foremost, it's about making sure that your sim is visible on OpenSimWorld at all. This requires a self-contained loop. Your sim is "popular" on OpenSimWorld -> it's higher up on the list of the most popular sims -> it takes less time and effort to find it -> more avatars visit it -> the "popularity" on OpenSimWorld increases.
See, is not an actual list that you can scroll through. Rather, it is organised in pages of ten sims each. This means that from number 10 to number 11 on that list, it's a huge step because people will have to go one page further rather than being shown your sim right away. From 9 to 10 isn't a step at all because both are on the first page.
OpenSimWorld lists 1,800+ sims, but not even 50 of them really matter. If your sim is among the top 10 most "popular" sims and therefore on page one, the loop runs faster. If it slips below 50 most of the time, and you don't have regular music events that yank it up every now and then, you'd better have a faithful community already that visits your sim regardless.
It takes a whole lot of work for the actual popularity of your sim to be self-contained, for people coming piling in in droves even though your sim isn't even listed on OSW anymore because it's such a famous cult place that landmarks are being shared all the time. (Having teleporters on other comparable sims helps.) Until then, you'll need all the tricks in the book for your sim to not go under and fall into obscurity.
Either you can copybot all the newest, hottest, sexiest Legacy and LaraX stuff from SL, offer it exclusively as no-transfer freebies before someone else does and advertise the hell out of it on OSW almost daily. Or you can have more events with well over a dozen visitors per week than the week has days. Or if you can't do either, you'll have to make sure that there are constantly at least four avatars on your sim on average over 24 hours, this or that way.
# # # # # # # # # # Sollte dieser Post da erscheinen
Jedenfalls, der erste Fehler ist, da du das /kbin-Magazin zum einen ber Eck ber Feddit anzuspielen versuchst und zum anderen gar nicht erwhnst.
Statt es als ber den Umweg ber Feddit zu verlinken, solltest du es wahrscheinlich eher a) direkt auf kbin.earth und b) erwhnen.
Mglicherweise funktioniert auch auf /kbin (das brigens eigentlich seit letztem Jahr mausetot ist und von jemand anders als Mbin weiterentwickelt wird) nur das Mastodon-nach-Lemmy-Schema:
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # Locally writing content to the database of an ActivityPub-based server will inevitably require a local user account on that very server.
I mean, we already have which was invented by for in 2017, and which also has full implementations in his later server applications and and a client-side implementation on Mike's first project, . But without an actual account on another server, OpenWebAuth can only authenticate you on that other server as a guest and grant you certain guest permissions. It does not give you all the powers of a local user, at least not without a local account.
Also, if you want to actually log in on another server, you will inevitably need local login credentials on that server. Which means that a user account with these login credentials must be created prior to you logging in on that server so that that server knows your login name and your password. Even if you want to use something like OAuth, that server will still require to know your credentials. They will have to be in that server's database before you can successfully log in.
A server cannot and will not authenticate you against credentials in a wholly different remote server's database. What you and many other Fediverse users dream of can only be solved in two ways and both only theoretically because, in practice, they are just as impossible or at least very unfeasible.
Either if you register an account on one Fediverse server, that account with the exact same credentials is simultaneously created on literally all other Fediverse servers, and on Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte, you also automatically get a channel along with that account. This also means that each Fediverse server that's installed and spun up for the first time will immediately have to create tens of millions of accounts so that everyone all over the Fediverse automatically has login credentials on that server. I guess it should be clear that this is impossible, also because this requires a) a centralised list of absolutely all Fediverse accounts and identities and b) a centralised list of all Fediverse servers to be hard-coded into every last instance of every last Fediverse server out there.
Now, I keep reading stuff like, "But I don't want to use all Fediverse servers!" No, but you want to be able to use any Fediverse server. And then you will have to have an account there. How is the Fediverse supposed to know in advance which servers you will visit this year, the next two years, five years, ten years so that accounts can be automatically created for you exactly there and nowhere else
See And that's why, if you want to be able to use any server like with a local account, every server must be prepared for it before you arrive.
Or drive-by registration: You visit a Fediverse server for the first time, your active login is recognised by that Fediverse server, and an account is created for you on the fly with the exact same login credentials as where you're already logged in. That's its own can of worms.
Also, it requires remote authentication. OpenWebAuth. As I've already said: This is technology that's eight years old, and that's being daily-driven right now. But: You will never have this on Mastodon. It was never merged. It was silently rejected by the Mastodon developers. The PR was closed in November, 2024.
Some people go even further: They don't just want their login credentials wherever they go, they want their whole identity cloned to everywhere. They want all their stuff, all their posts and comments and DMs, all their followers and followed, all their settings, all their filters etc. etc. pp., they want it everywhere all the same. Like a (an invention by Mike from 2011, first implemented in 2012) across up to 30,000 servers.
Now, you and many others on Mastodon are probably going to cry out, "YES, YES, PLEASE MAKE THIS REALITY!"
But seriously: I myself have actually cloned enough Hubzilla and (streams) channels of mine in my time. None of them even had nearly as much content on them as your Mastodon account. And I can tell from a lot of personal experience that this cannot be done within a blink of an eye.
Nomadic identity won't come to Mastodon anyway. Nomadic identity via ActivityPub is probably being daily-driven already. Forte has it, and it relies on it. But Mastodon will never implement it. In particular, Mastodon would rather re-invent the "nomadic identity" wheel in a way that's incompatible with what we already have than implement something made by Mike Macgirvin. Not after all the head-butting that has happened between Mike and Gargron over the years.
And OpenWebAuth won't come to Mastodon either. Probably also for the same reason.
CC:
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Ich staune auch darber, da Friendica damals noch die Facebook-Erweiterung hatte und es doch einen ganzen Batzen Red-Matrix-Server gab. Sean Tilley hatte einen, der spter auch mal Hubzilla-Themes gebaut hat, Farthinghale Arms ist wohl auch irgendwann zu Hubzilla upgegradet worden, und Els Mussols, heute auf (streams), existierte auch schon in der Red Matrix.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #Okay. So NakedWorldz Grid is going to shut down on Monday.
This must have been decided only a few days ago, no more a week before the actual shutdown, maybe only five days. There was no public announcement, this must have only gone out to the various sim owners in the grid, and (notice all the invites to other grids in the comments). It isn't even clear if sim owners can get or make OARs of their sims. All sims run by the grid owners have been pulled from OpenSimWorld two days ago or so. They're still online, but they're no longer advertised anywhere.
But seriously, it was clear that this grid wouldn't last for long. What's essentially the main landing sim is a "family-friendly nudist" sim. Officially, this means, "Nudity yes, anything sexual no." Officially, the idea was that people could go there and play "family on a nudist beach". Hence, it's "only" Moderate-rated whereas pretty much all other sims around the Hypergrid that officially allow nudity are Adult-rated. In fact, so are many that don't.
Now, if you've experienced a few "family-friendly nudist" places in OpenSim, you could have expected how this actually played out. If there are avatars on the main landing sim for a prolonged time, it most likely includes grid staff. As child avatars. Butt-naked kids. Staff.
Also, their "official" freebie sim offers everything you'd need for a naked child avatar. Not stashed away behind a door or so. Out in the open. And that freebie store is only one room with no walls separating anything. And it's organised neatly enough that I'd have a hard time believing that whoever put that stuff up had no idea what it is. On some boxes, the frigging box art says it all. I mean, I know that hardly any "stuff found all around the Hypergrid" freebie store owners curate anything they slap against their walls, but still.
Whenever such a place is launched, I take three possibilities into consideration:
Seriously, the more often I see something like this be launched, just to pull the plug on rather short notice, the harder I find it to believe in the first two options. Still, quite a few OpenSim users flocked to NakedWorldz and acquired either a free parcel of land or a whole sim. More than half the landmass of the grid is rented land.
I remember a few more places with similar concepts. All of them have vanished into thin air with no shutdown announcements. That is, I remember that one of them has moved to another grid which was entirely unknown to the OpenSim community with not even one single sim listed on OpenSimWorld no idea if that grid still exists, much less that sim. Anyway, this was the first time I recall that someone actually launched a grid for such a concept. The fact that we're talking about a grid of its own with land rentals may be why it wasn't shut down spontaneously: The tenants had to be considered and taken care of. Closing a grid with rented sims on it from one moment to the next with no announcment whatsoever is bad style.
The fact that a grid was built around the premise of "family-friendly nudism" makes it rather clear that we aren't talking about complete OpenSim newbies here, not only because you have to know how to run a grid (and be it a DreamGrid), but also because if you want to build a naked child avatar, you really have to know where to look for the ingredients. And why would someone go to such length and start their own grid for such a purpose Because they probably know exactly that a sim with this concept isn't welcome in any existing grid. So navet wasn't in play here.
By the way, there definitely used to be paedos in OpenSim, including at least one convicted one, and that's a fact. Avatars of mine have encountered two different flavours of these. No matter whether they're gone or still around under new guises, but it isn't unlikely that there still are some.
In fact, they're the reason why many sim owners in OpenSim have "re-defined" the ratings which OpenSim has taken over from Second Life. The Adult rating now stands for "no child avatars allowed" first and foremost. And in fact, it often only stands for that. We're approaching a point at which fewer Adult-rated sims allow nudity anywhere than not. Quite often, the Adult rating means "PG-rated, but no child avatars allowed".
Sim owners get away with this easily because the vast majority of grids don't have any definition of their own for these ratings. It used to be consensus that Second Life's definitions are OpenSim's definition. It seemed futile to write that down. The only grid that did is DigiWorldz, and even DigiWorldz allows for bending these definitions all the way to rating a G-rated sim Adult for whichever reason. And the days when nudists could enter Adult-rated sims butt-naked, be kicked and banned for breaking an unwritten "no nudity" rule and subsequently have the sim downrated from Adult to Moderate by force both by the grid owners and on OpenSimWorld seem to be over.
That said, there are also paedo witch hunters in OpenSim who are way overzealous in their definitions of what constitutes an underage avatar. They have criteria like avatar height under 1.80m (if they're Europeans)/6 feet (if they're Americans), measured the Second Life way up to the eyes rather than the OpenSim way up to the top of the head, an Athena/LaraX Petite or Legacy Perky body, a skin without a deep tan, sneakers or generally footwear without heels of at least 15cm or 6 inches on a female avatar, a hairstyle that isn't a long lush sexy mane or an outfit that doesn't max out an avatar's sexiness or badassness. If at least one or two criteria on this list are met, your avatar is a kid, and you're a paedo.
Who may be behind the sudden closure of NakedWorldz, I don't know. Maybe the grid was bullied out of OpenSim. Maybe there were actually legal threats against the grid that came in time for the grid to shut down at the end of the month. Maybe someone acquired information about the grid owners that I don't have (maybe they were actually behind earlier "family-friendly nudism" projects as well) and threatened or blackmailed them.
Fact is, however, that it's a grid with a rather questionable concept that was launched into a network of virtual worlds where not exactly few people don't even tolerate a tiny fraction of that concept.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # #Na ja, RaccoonForFriendica ist noch hochgradig unfertig, egal, fr welches System.
Und FediLab ist mehr so eine Allgemein-App, die will einiges jeweils ein bichen abdecken, aber nichts davon vollumfnglich. Und die Filter in Friendica drften ziemlich anders funktionieren als die fr Mastodon, fr die die Filtersteuerung in FediLab wohl primr ausgelegt ist.
Du knntest dir statt dessen Relatica angucken.
Hast du einen PC Einen Laptop Oder ist dein Smartphone dein einziges digitales Endgert Sonst wrde ich nmlich sagen, nimm den PC/Laptop zwischendurch mal fr gelegentliche Einstellungs- und Konfigurationsgeschichten, die du nicht stndig brauchst. Oder frag irgendjemanden aus deinem Bekanntenkreis, ob du da fr solche Sachen mal eben an den PC oder Laptop kannst.
Jedenfalls gibt es keine Android-App, die Friendicas vollen Funktionsumfang komplett auf einer nativen Android-Oberflche abbildet.
(Disclaimer: alles ungetestet. Ich bin hier auf Hubzilla an einem Debian-PC.)
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # OpenSim has a similar problem, but it's even harder to solve.
has a very basic ranking system for . It isn't for specific parcels, it's for entire sims. The problem, of course, is that it can be manipulated very easily, and it is actually being manipulated constantly.
The ranking "algorithm" is very simple: It only counts how long how many avatars are present. It does not even recognise individual avatars, much less IPs. Also, it allows for sims to rise in popularity very quickly: One sufficiently big event, and they're in the top 10.
There are many ways of manipulating this algorithm, including:
If you host your sim yourself, or if you're even the grid owner, the Radegast viewer is your friend. Install it next to OpenSim and automatically launch a bunch of instances right after your region server has come online. Instant top 10 ranking if you do that with at least four avatars.
Of course, this goes along with claiming either that you don't care for ranking or that it's regular visitor traffic.
A trick that has never been that popular is to make visitors camp on your sim. Offer content on your sim for in-world "Monopoly money". Give visitors a limited amount of that money to whet their appetite. And then give them the chance to earn more money by doing something on your sim for long enough. I've seen this come with a time limit to ensure that the camping is not too obvious, but this also means that you'll have to come back often to earn some more money.
I think there may still be some scoundrels who try to acquire older versions of the OSW beacon that still count NPCs as avatars, or who try to modify newer versions into counting NPCs as avatars. However, OSW no longer recognises these older beacons, and it will ban your sim if you use a hacked beacon.
That is, you can also report sims which obviously cheat their traffic figures to the OSW admin who will then turn the visitor counter for that sim permanently off. However, when a sim owner discovers that this has happened, they do what they also do after one negative comment or review or zero-star rating: They delete the whole entry and make a new one for the same sim. This comes with extra the advantage of the sim also being listed among the .
By the way, this feature was introduced after someone exposed the system of popularity rigging with alts by dropping 60 alts on one OSW-listed sim. And I guess countermeasures against this were mostly demanded by high-ranking OSgrid residents because it took that sim mere hours to outrank Lbsa Plaza.
Unfortunately, many of your suggestions for counter-measures wouldn't work in OpenSim.
In fact, if actual movement (as opposed to animations) counts, then events will be heavily downranked anyway. I mean, what do people do at DJ events in OpenSim
Many actually leave the music running in the background and do something else in the meantime. Others only interact by gestures or "Yay" confetti throwers or other scripted attachments I mean, that's at least something.
In fact, I know someone who sometimes sends one avatar to a DJ event and then another avatar with the same identity, but from another grid, to a non-DJ event and only actually operates the latter one. That same someone has also sent an avatar to a five-hour DJ event and then gone AFK to attend a nearby real-life music festival for some two hours and actually announced it.
Even I sometimes have avatars at two events at the same time I focus more on the event which requires switching dance animations and turn the music from the other one down. But even when I attend the same event with two avatars (I can't go anywhere alone without people asking where is, how she's doing and when she'll come), both contribute to the local chat occasionally, and we do change dance animations along with the music (unless the DJ plays four hours of house or something).
Due to the abundance of event locations, DJ events can actually last quite long, sometimes three, four or more hours with one DJ. So a 90-minute threshold would be counter-productive.
All in all, it's next to impossible to implement fair and realistic sim rating that cannot be rigged in a decentralised system of virtual worlds where just about everything is third-party.
# # # # # # # # # #
It's actually tempting to imagine a vicious circle here: If almost everything has the Mastodon client API implemented, it isn't worth developing dedicated client apps that also cover other servers' extra features.
Instead, the reason why all kinds of server applications have the Mastodon client API implemented is because they absolutely need some phone apps that work with them. Just look around the Fediverse. Almost everyone is exclusively on phones nowadays. And especially iPhone users wouldn't touch a Web browser with a 10-foot barge pole if they don't absolutely have to, so expecting them to use the Web UI means you're stuck in a bubble or a time where smartphones are still a gimmick.
That's why even Friendica has implemented the Mastodon client API. I mean, Mastodon and Friendica are very different, and the Mastodon client API only covers a small fraction of what Friendica can do. It actually doesn't cover some critical everyday features.
At the same time, there's little to no incentive for those who can develop mobile apps to make apps for anything that isn't Mastodon. Many start working on Fediverse apps at a point when they still believe the Fediverse is only Mastodon. Or if they don't, at least they've never heard of Pleroma and its family, Misskey and its family, Friendica and its family (where Hubzilla would require a wholly different app than Friendica, and (streams) and Forte would require a wholly different app than both) etc. Or they genuinely think that developing the umpteenth iPhone app for Mastodon is worth the effort more than developing the first stable dedicated iPhone app for Friendica. It's a miracle that stuff like Aria for the *key family exists.
It seems like of all the server apps that don't do *blogging (purist long-form blogging stuff like WriteFreely excluded), Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte are the only ones that don't have the Mastodon client API implemented. And I can't see them do it. For one, their devs steer clear of all proprietary, non-standard Mastodon technology. But other than that, these three are even less like Mastodon than Friendica, and they work even less like Mastodon. Even using a Mastodon app for stuff like basic posting is out of question because it pretty much requires access to the per-post permission settings, something that Mastodon doesn't have implemented, and therefore, neither do the apps for it.
Now, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte can be installed as so-called Progressive Web Apps. But only Hubzilla veterans ever do that, and that's for three reasons: One, next to nobody has ever heard of the very concept of PWAs. Two, all that people know is installing apps from the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store. And three, people want native mobile interfaces in the style of whatever phone they use. It doesn't matter how well the Web UIs of these three adapt to mobile screens, especially since 90% of all phone users have totally forgotten that you can rotate a phone sideways.
Hubzilla actually has its own client API, and I think (streams) and forte have their own one, too. But nobody has ever even only tried to build a native mobile app for either of them. Hubzilla's devs even have to admit that they don't know how well Hubzilla's client API works because there has literally never been a sufficiently-featured counterpart to test it against. All there is is an extremely basic Android app built by one of them that's available as a download somewhere, and all it can do is send very basic posts, I think, even only at your default settings. It's just a proof of concept.
The ActivityPub C2S API is just as untested.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # Long
Here on Hubzilla, I see the whole thread as one right away, all the way to the start post, without having to look at it at its origin.
The only improvement that I'm waiting for is the tree-style view that'll soon be rolled out with Hubzilla 10.4 (Friendica, (streams) and Forte already have tree-style views whereas Hubzilla had a strictly chronological thread view until the recent RCs).
# # # # # # # # # # # In the words of a diaspora* developer, if Mozilla and Vivaldi "implemented ActivityPub", they'd actually "implement Mastodon". That'd mean catching more users with less effort than implementing vanilla ActivityPub and implementing features that Mastodon doesn't have. Besides, both used to have or still have a Mastodon server, but they don't seem to be aware that there's a Fediverse beyond Mastodon, much less what it's like and how it works.
In fact, they wouldn't even implement the ActivityPub C2S API at all. They'd implement the Mastodon client API and only the Mastodon client API.
CC:
# # # # # # # # # # # # This may come as a surprise to you, but: The Fediverse is not only Mastodon. And it has never been only Mastodon. It was neither invented by Eugen Rochko nor exclusively for purist microblogging.
For example, there is also Friendica (, , , ). It was launched in July, 2010, 15 years ago, five and a half years before Mastodon. It is Facebook-like, but designed to be better than Facebook rather than an all-out clone and to be fully capable of long-form blogging. It has a character limit of 200,000, its culture does not enforce brevity, and it staunchly refuses to ditch its own culture and adopt Mastodon's culture instead. It can also do other things that don't belong into purist microblogging such as bold type, italics, underlines, bullet-point lists and multiple levels of headlines.
Here are lists of Friendica nodes for you to block:
Then there is Hubzilla (, , ), first launched in March, 2015, ten years ago, ten months before Mastodon. It's based on Friendica with many more features that make it a CMS as well. It has a character limit of over 16.7 million (maximum size of the database field).
I'm commenting from Hubzilla myself right now.
Here are lists of Hubzilla hubs for you to block:
More recently and from the same family, there are (streams) () from 2021 and Forte () from 2024. Again, they are Facebook-like, just like Friendica. Their character limit is over 24 million.
Again, here are lists of servers for you to block:
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # Das ist so hnlich, wie ich es mache.
Nur sind meine "Kurzbeschreibungen" im Alt-Text auch schon mal so lang wie die ausfhrlichen Beschreibungen von und .
Die langen Beschreibungen stehen nicht im Alt-Text, sondern im Post selbst. Wenn du dir meine Bilderposts (die nicht mehr ber diesen Kanal kommen, sondern ber und auch das nur selten, weil es jedes Mal ein Riesenaufwand ist) statt auf Mastodon direkt an der Quelle auf (streams) ansiehst, wirst du die langen Beschreibungen normalweise in einem Block direkt unterhalb der Bilder finden.
Die enthalten volle Wort-fr-Wort-, ja, sogar Zeichen-fr-Zeichen-Transkripte von jedem bichen Text innerhalb der Umgrenzungen des Bildes. Die enthalten alle Erklrungen, die ntig sind, damit jemand komplett Uninformiertes sowohl das Bild als auch die Beschreibung versteht. Visuell beschrieben ist in den Bildern beinahe alles, und zwar nicht so, wie es auf dem Bild zu sehen ist, sondern so, wie ich es direkt vor Ort gesehen habe, also auch unabhngig von der Bildauflsung.
Unterm Strich kommen meine langen Beschreibungen so ziemlich immer auf eine fnfstellige Anzahl an Zeichen. Die sind so lang, die haben Zwischenberschriften. Ich habe auch schon mal zwei ganze Tage gebraucht, um ein einziges Bild zu beschreiben. Dies zum Thema "das geht in ein paar Sekunden".
Und ja, es gibt Leute, die so detaillierte Beschreibungen zu schtzen wissen. Ich bin mir sogar ziemlich sicher, da es Leute gibt, die so detaillierte Beschreibungen brauchen.
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If you want something more versatile with a built-in image host/file host, if you don't mind it not being a specialised, purist blogging solution, you may check the "Facebook alternative, but better than Facebook and with a side of long-form blogging" parts of the Fediverse: Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams), Forte.
Plume is similarly purist as WriteFreely, it features both comments and a built-in image storage, but its development has come to a halt, and its own devs recommend WriteFreely.
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What Bluesky has as a vague concept that's far from being implemented can't hold a candle to what Hubzilla has had for 13 years now. 12 years of stable releases. What it has passed on to a whole number of forks and forks of forks, all by the same creator, of which the streams repository of 2021 and Forte of 2024 still exist. As of Forte, it works entirely via ActivityPub without requiring its own protocol, and it should theoretically even work between servers of different types (if there was anything else with an ActivityPub nomadic identity implementation to clone and move from and to).
We have an account portability model (only not for accounts as in logins see below). We have it in spades. We have it beyond everyone's wildest imagination. And it has been daily-driven by Fediverse users for much longer than most of you have been on Mastodon.
The real issues are: It relies on separating your identity (posts, comments, DMs, settings, connections, files, filters etc. etc.) from your login/account, but just about everywhere that isn't Hubzilla, (streams) or Forte, they're firmly welded together, and separating them is next to unthinkable. And even if that wasn't an issue, Mastodon would still never adopt it, and be it because Eugen Rochko refuses to accept anything that's Mike Macgirvin's brain-child.
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# # # # # # # # # # # # # It has been solved by Friendica for 15 years. Five and a half years longer than Mastodon has been around.
It has been solved by Hubzilla for 10 or 13 years, depending on what you count as Hubzilla's first release.
It has been solved by the other members in the family just as well.
There even is an FEP for that which is based on how (streams) and Forte do it: .
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Little nitpick: OSgrid is not "the OpenSim grid". It is not even "the official OpenSim grid". There is no such thing as an official OpenSim grid, only 4,000+ big and small grids that are independent from both each other and OpenSim's development.
In fact, OpenSim, that's five spare-time hobbyists, a wiki, a code repository and a bug tracker. Nothing more. Everything else is third-party.
OSgrid was the first public grid. It's the oldest grid, 18 years next month. And it's probably the only major grid that runs vanilla code so that the OpenSim devs can debug their development code under regular conditions. AFAIK, the other big grids all run forks. In fact, OSgrid isn't even the biggest grid anymore. While it's bigger than Second Life, the Wolf Territories Grid is bigger than both.
If you want to know more, your blog post was the perfect opportunity for me to finally write that I had planned for a while now.
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Oh does this feel like my inner monologue when I post a photo. It is a bummer that it, at times, prevents me from posting more photos, but I hope this make me a little more quality over quantity.
I actually keep entire categories of things out of my images because I can't describe them up to my own standards. This includes realistic buildings. I would first have to look up loads of architectural terms to describe all details of a building, and then I would have to explain each and every one of these architectural buildings in a way that absolute laypeople understand my image description without ever having to ask me anything or look anything up themselves.
The last time I posted an image with a building was . I actually went around and looked for a nice motive for a new image post for quite a while. There was one harbour scene which I thought looked spectacular enough to show, but which was impossible to describe. So I fell back to this motive. I thought it's not too bland, not too simple and at the same time not too complex. Besides, the one building in the image is totally unrealistic and without all the tiny details that would make up a realistic building.
And then I ended up taking some 30 hours over two days to describe the image in over 60,000 characters. The building alone took up some 40,000 or so. This is still the longest image description in the whole Fediverse, I think.
My last image post before that was with still over 25,000 characters of description for one image, and I consider it outdated slop.
It was the last time that I described an image in my image with more details than visible in the original of that image itself. And that's where I got sloppy. I completely forgot to transcribe what's written on the license plate above the office door of the motel in that image in my image. And I couldn't be bothered to give detailed descriptions of the two 1957 Chevy Bel Airs parked in front of the motel because I really wanted to get that description done. In the actual image, all of this is sub-pixel-sized. You wouldn't know it's even there if I didn't mention it. I did describe the motel, but it's a fairly simple building, and I decided against describing what's visible through the windows with open blinds from the camera angle in the image in my image.
In the next image, the one with 60,000+ characters of description, I stopped describing images in the image beyond what I can see in the place where the image itself was taken. That was because one image is a destination preview image on a teleporter. The destination is a kind of teleport hub. The preview actually (if only barely so) shows over 300 single-destination teleporters, a few dozen of them with their own preview images.
So I teleported to that hub to describe it in detail. And I looked at the teleporters and their preview images. Turned out, not only do these preview images pretty much all have text in them and not necessarily few bits of text, but some of them actually have images within themselves again.
I would have had to describe that image in my image, dozens of images in that image in my image and a number of images in these images in that image in my image. For each of the latter, I would have had to teleport three times from the place that I originally wanted to describe. I would also have had a whole lot more text to transcribe. All on a sub-pixel scale several times over.
Not only would that have been a humongous task, but more importantly, it would have inflated my image description and my whole post to more than 100,000 characters. Mastodon would probably have rejected my post for being too long. And this would have rendered the whole effort futile. In the few places in the Fediverse that would still have accepted my post, nobody cares for image descriptions.
AI certainly can't get inside my brain well enough to write accurate descriptions. Even if it could would I hmmm.
I've only used AI to describe images twice. And in both cases, that was to show just how bad AI is at describing images about an extremely obscure and quickly changing niche topic at the level of accuracy and detail which I deem necessary for that topic.
I guess one problem that you're facing is that next to nobody in the Fediverse can even grasp what you're thinking about, what you're taking into consideration for your image descriptions. That's why you got next to no feedback upon your first comment in this thread.
I have one advantage here: What you're pondering, I have actually done. If I feel like people won't understand what I'm thinking about, I point them at one or several of my actual image posts, and/or I post a quote from one of my actual image descriptions. Still, almost nobody actually goes and reads through any of my image descriptions, but I guess they get the gist, especially when I post snippets from my actual descriptions.
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# # # # # # # # # # # Just for me to be on the safe side: What are your minimum requirements for alt-texts and image descriptions so you refrain from sanctioning a user
Full, to-the-point adherence to , the , etc., even though they contradict each other
Do you demand image descriptions be detailed and informative enough so that nobody will ever have to ask the poster about explanations and/or details because they're all already in the descriptions, no matter how niche and obscure the content of the image is
If there is already a lengthy image description in the post itself (imagine all character limits you know in the Fediverse it's longer than all of them by magnitudes), do you still demand there be another description in the alt-text, even though the alt-text actually points the user to the description in the post, because there absolutely must be a sufficiently detailed and accurate image description in the alt-text, full stop
In fact, do you sanction image descriptions in general or alt-texts in particular if you think they are too long For example, if you stumble upon an image post from me that has a "short" image description of 1,400 characters in the alt-text and a "long" image description of over 60,000 characters in the post itself (and I've actually posted such a thing into the Fediverse ), will you demand I discard two days and some 30 hours of work, delete the long description and cut the short description down to no more than 200 characters Maybe even while still retaining the same amount of information Lest you have me dogpiled and mass-blocked or worse
By the way, , and .
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First of all, your link is behind a paywall.
Next, I hope you don't honestly think that only two virtual worlds systems were ever made, Second Life and "The Metaverse" which many think is the official and trademarked name of Meta Horizon (very early on Facebook Horizon, a.k.a. "Meta Metaverse", "Facebook Metaverse" or "Zuckerberg's Metaverse").
On a sidenote: The community has been using the term "metaverse" for actually existing virtual worlds in its standard jargon since 2007, the year that OpenSim was first released. 14 years longer than Zuckerberg. In particular, , the first public OpenSim grid, the oldest OpenSim grid and until fairly recently the biggest one, has officially labelled itself "The Open Source Metaverse" since 2007. Also, there are things like the which resides in , another OpenSim grid, the which focuses on and is based in OpenSim, too, and entire grids like the . All of them predate both Zuckerberg's 2021 Metaverse announcement and the 2022/2023 Metaverse hype.
While the big Second Life hype was from 2007 to late 2008, it hasn't entirely faded into obscurity. And academics and psychologists aren't that big a part of its user base. Many Second Life users have stuck around since the late 2000s or 2010s, and most are hobbyists.
If you want an insight into Second Life without actually spending lots of time there, check Wagner James "Hamlet" Au's blog . He also covers other virtual worlds from VRChat to Horizon.
As I can't read your blog post, I do hope you've written it from the perspective of someone who actually knows a few things about Second Life, such as that it's constantly evolving, and that it's the one virtual world that's the closest in looks to Cyberpunk 2077, now that physically-based rendering is spreading. And not from the perspective of someone who only very recently discovered that Second Life was, surprisingly, not shut down in late 2008 or early 2009, and who thinks it still looks the same as back then.
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You say this like it's a bad thing.
Not at all.
One advantage is, as you've said, that the backend and the Web frontend can have their own developers, development of both can largely be detached, and they can be upgraded separately from one another.
Separate Web frontends can be developed by people who actually know a thing or two about frontend development and UI design. I mean, look at the Web UIs of some all-in-one Fediverse server applications. They're often the digital counterpart of random knobs and switches poked through a piece of cardboard and labelled with a ball pen, just so that these knobs and switches are there. Sometimes they're the equivalent of expecting all kinds of end users to operate DIP switches, but hey, they're still better than soldering and unsoldering wires.
Another advantage is that server software for which alternative frontends exist does not have to drag its default frontend around. There are Mastodon servers with alternative frontends, but they still have to have the two official Web UIs installed (the default one and the Tweetdeck-style one) because they're firmly welded to the backend. I guess we all know what a heavyweight Mastodon is, and I'm certain that part of the weight is caused by the built-in Web UIs. In stark contrast, you can set up an Akkoma server with Mangane instead of Akkoma-FE, as in without having to also install Akkoma-FE.
By the way, Hubzilla is an interesting case here. Not only is its default UI very configurable, but Hubzilla itself is highly themeable, and third-party themes almost amount to entirely new UIs. At the same time, however, practically all official development efforts went only into the backend for most of its existence.
Any Hubzilla UI has to wrestle an immense wealth of features, and not exactly new features were added over time. This, however, caused Hubzilla's UI to gradually turn into a jumbled mess because some of the new UI elements were seemingly added in totally random places. Not only was the UI never cleaned up, but the default theme is perpetually stuck in 2012 (the name "Redbasic" says it all, it was made for Hubzilla when Hubzilla was still named Red), it was derived from an early Friendica theme, and even Friendica wasn't pretty back then. Also, the documentation was completely neglected.
So the situation last year was that there was only one working Hubzilla theme left, and that was Redbasic. It was the only theme that was even only upgraded to work with newer Hubzilla versions. There used to be other official themes, but they eventually ended up so outdated that they were removed altogether. 's third-party themes were last touched seven years ago, that must have been around the time when Hubzilla 3 came out. At the same time, the official documentation was not only highly incomplete, but it was so outdated that parts of it were simply false. It partly referred to features that had been axed many years ago (tech levels) and features that simply were never there (four different mention styles), and parts of it even still spoke of Red. Thus, nobody even knew how to develop new themes for current Hubzilla.
That was when the community stepped in. sat down and . not only started working on his , but in the same process, he reverse-engineered Hubzilla's theming system to write documentation for theming Hubzilla which had never been written before AFAIK. Around that time, was dabbling with specialised themes for certain purposes, e.g. one very clean theme for Hubzilla channels used as long-form blogs. Later on, joined the fray with his now-popular .
Granted, Hubzilla still carries Redbasic around, not only as the default for new channels unless the admin chooses another one, but also as a fallback in case a new Hubzilla version doesn't support existing third-party themes anymore. The latter is becoming less likely as the Utsukta themes are being built against Hubzilla's development versions now. Besides, it's in Hubzilla's nature that everything on a hub is updated at the same time, including third-party repositories.
In general, the Hubzilla community is no longer that easily satisfied with a UI that "just works", and the devs have taken notice. Hubzilla 10.4, now a release candidate, will spruce up certain core parts of the UI. It will introduce a tree-style thread view as the new default instead of its current chronological view, something that Friendica, (streams) and Forte have had for significantly longer. That is, this is actually a side-effect of the introduction of "lazy loading" conversations to reduce the server workload. Also, upon user request, it will add a button to add images to comments.
If (streams) and Forte grow bigger, the same could happen there. They have two official themes to choose from, fairly new Fresh and an older version of Redbasic. However, they don't have a large enough community for all the same things to happen to them that happened to Hubzilla, although Pepe has said he'd rewrite the (streams) and Forte help as well, seeing as Mike had ripped them out entirely with no replacements as they were too outdated at that point. Maybe someone will even write a guide on how to adapt Hubzilla themes to (streams) and Forte.
That is, (streams) and Forte are both already the result of several years of UI and UX advancement and improvements and making them fit for a Mastodon-dominated Fediverse (where Hubzilla is still geared towards a Fediverse which it will dominate itself by the mid-to-late 2010s). This is stuff which can't be taken care of in themes because it concerns the UI engine itself, and it's partly tied deeply into the backend.
While Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte won't be able to do without their official themes anytime soon, the official themes don't significantly weigh them down. Still, they require some maintenance work to keep up with the backend.
Wouldn't Mastodon would be better if it specialised in developing apps, and outsourced the server side to people who know how to do back-end engineering
This makes me wonder which half Mastodon would be willing to outsource. I think they'd rather hold on to the backend and pass all the frontends on. Of course, this would come with the advantage of the official Mastodon mobile app actually becoming somewhat decent rather than remaining the "we need an official app, no matter how" kluge that it is today.
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The J. Arthur Keenes Band Overcoat Weather
CC BY-NC-ND ( Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives)
It belongs to the group of long-horned beetles, also known as cerambycids (family Cerambycidae). They are a diverse group of beetles characterized by their long antennae, often longer than their bodies, hence their name.
-horned Beetles It's similar for me, only that I always put a gigantic effort into describing my own images twice, once not exactly briefly in the alt-text and once with even more details in the post itself. Sometimes I find an interesting motive, but when I start thinking about how to describe it, I don't even render an image because it isn't worth doing so if I can't post it.
I haven't posted a new image in almost a year. In fact, I've got a series of fairly simple images for which I've started writing the descriptions late last year, and I'm still not done. So much about "it only takes a few seconds".
Before someone suggests I could use Altbot: I'm not even sure if it'll work with Hubzilla posts. And besides, no AI on this planet is fit for the task of properly, appropriately and accurately describing the kind of images that I post.
And then there's me who has managed to describe one image in a bit over ten thousand words last year. Good thing I have a post character limit of over 16.7 million. And I actually limited myself this time: I did not describe images within my image in detail, in stark contrast to about two years ago when I described a barely visible image in an image in well over 4,000 characters of its own, and that wasn't the only image within that image that I described.
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# # # # # # # # # # # So Pleroma and Akkoma (which, for some reason, is missing from the list) actually use the ActivityPub C2S API to connect their frontends Even though Pleroma predates ActivityPub and started out as an alternative GNU social frontend, much like Mastodon
I mean, they're famous for having separate repositories for the server and the Web frontend (same name with "-FE" attached). And they're equally famous for having servers that forgo the official frontend in favour of third-party stuff, most notably Mangane.
So if Mangane actually makes use of that API rather than a homebrew *oma client API, it could be used as or, if need be, modified into a sparrings partner for API-testing purposes, not to mention that it's living proof that the API actually works. As it integrates with Pleroma and Akkoma that well, I've got my doubts that it only uses the Mastodon client API.
In the cases of (streams) and Forte which are almost the same software save for protocol support, the Web UI is much closer to the server backend, as flexible and modifyable it is. In their cases, the question would be whether they could be used to test just how far feature support in the ActivityPub C2S API can possibly go, maybe even whether it'd be possible to use the ActivityPub C2S API to build an almost fully-featured (streams)/Forte client app (except, of course, Web UI configuration and (streams)' per-channel ActivityPub switch which might cut the whole app off the server).
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# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # First of all: You must never put line breaks into alt-text. Ever. (, )
Besides, that will certainly not be the day that I'll post my first image after more than a year.
It's tedious enough to properly describe my original images at the necessary level of detail, and one image takes me many hours to describe, sometimes up to two full days, morning to evening. Not joking here. I certainly won't put extra effort into turning at least the 900 characters of "short" description that go into the alt-text into a poem. And I definitely will not also turn the additional 20,000, 40,000, 60,000 characters of long description that go into the post into a poem as well. (And yes, I can post 60,000+ characters in one go, and I have done so in the past. My character limit is 16,777,215.)
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Sachen erst einmal zusammenfassend im Gesamten zu beschreiben, fiele mir persnlich dazu ein, damit Menschen ins Boot geholt sind. Wenn sich zu Details geuert wird oder Details erfragt werden, knnte sich das dann ggf weiter entfalten.
In deinem vorigen Kommentar hast du selbst geschrieben, und ich zitiere wrtlich:
Inhalte erfragen-Mssen steht im Widerspruch zur Teilhabe:
Das heit fr mich: Die Leute sollen gar nicht erst fragen mssen. Die sollen gar nichts fragen mssen. Alles, was sie an Informationen brauchen, egal, wieviele und welche das sind, mu sofort im Bildpost zusammen mit dem Bild mitgeliefert werden.
Da wir hier allerdings gerade anscheinend nur zu zweit sprechen und auch ich nicht blind bin: Vielleicht das Problem auch in der eigenen Timeline mal zum Thema machen, explizit Blinde um ihre Gedanken dazu bitten und # fedihelp dazustellen
Das habe ich wirklich schon oft genug versucht siehe . Und oft genug poste ich auch noch in zwei Guppe Groups.
Erfolg: minimal. Auf die meisten Posts gab es absolut berhaupt keine Reaktionen. Manchmal gab es einen Like oder vielleicht zwei. Selbst wiederholt/geboostet wurde beinahe keiner davon jemals. Antworten kamen oft genug von Leuten, die gar nicht verstanden, was ich eigentlich wollte, so etwa von Hubzilla, wo die Idee der Barrierefreiheit und Inklusion bis heute nicht angekommen ist und Alt-Texte teilweise als "noch so'n dummer Mastodon-Tick" wahrgenommen werden, weit berwiegend aber genau wie die Mastodon-Kultur allgemein komplett unbekannt sind.
Ich hatte Abstimmungen mit weniger Teilnehmern als Optionen.
Das einzige Mal, wo wirklich mal mehrere tatschlich Blinde auf so einen Post geantwortet haben, war . Und das auch nur, weil ich tatschlich einen ganzen Haufen blinder Aktivisten im Fediverse persnlich erwhnt habe.
Die Hrden sind vielfltig.
- Mir folgen weit ber 600 Konten und Kanle, aber dabei springt bemerkenswert wenig Reichweite raus. So manch einer auf Mastodon erzielt mehr Reichweite und mehr Interaktion mit der Hlfte an Followers.
- Ich kann ber das Thema wirklich nur mit Mastodon-Nutzern reden, weil nur Mastodon-Nutzer mit dem Thema berhaupt vertraut sind. Aber Mastodon-Nutzer bekommen nur einen winzigen Bruchteil dessen mit, was in ihre Timelines gesplt wird, weil sie irgendwann keine Zeit/keinen Bock mehr haben, noch weiter runterzuscrollen. Ich mte immer genau zu einem Zeitpunkt posten, kurz bevor mglichst viele Mastodon-Nutzer, die das Thema anspricht, ihre Apps anschmeien und durch ihre Timelines scrollen.
- Ich mu zwingend deutlich mehr als 500 Zeichen posten. Wenn ich das aber tue, verliere ich auf Mastodon geschtzt 90% an Leserschaft.
- Es kommt schnell zu Unverstndnissen, weil Mastodon-Nutzer "Alt-Text" und "Bildbeschreibung" gleichsetzen und sich nicht vorstellen knnen, da jemand eine Bildbeschreibung in den Post packt. "Bildbeschreibung im Post" ist fr sie "Bildbeschreibung im Alt-Text im Post". Somit ist es fr sie auch unvorstellbar, zwei Bildbeschreibungen zu haben.
- Bildbeschreibungen mit zigtausenden Zeichen sind auch unvorstellbar. Irgendwas im Fediverse mit zigtausend Zeichen ist unvorstellbar fr die allermeisten Mastodon-Nutzer. Viele haben nicht mal geahnt, da im Fediverse abgesehen von Alt-Texts irgendwas mit ber 500 Zeichen existieren knnte, bis sie ber meinen Post gestolpert sind.
- Allgemein ist unvorstellbar, wie ich Texte auf Bildern aus virtuellen Welten transkribieren kann, die auf den Bildern selbst nicht lesbar sind. Es ist nmlich unvorstellbar, beim Beschreiben eines Bildes die Informationen dafr nicht nur aus dem Bild selbst zu holen. Ich meine, du hast dir das ja auch nicht vorstellen knnen. Das heit, vielfach ist schon unvorstellbar, da es unlesbaren Text berhaupt gibt, denn Text-Transkripte (oder berhaupt Text auf Bildern) kennt man auf Mastodon praktisch nur von Screenshots von Social-Media-Posts oder Newsseiten oder von Postern.
- Die beiden Guppe Groups sind mausetot. Die paar Konten, die denen folgen, sind wahrscheinlich selbst lngst verlassen.
- Hashtags bringen im Endeffekt fast gar nichts, um an Mastodon-Nutzer ranzukommen. Gefhlt 99% aller Mastodon-Nutzer wissen nicht, da man Hashtags folgen kann, weil sie das auf Twitter auch nicht konnten. Den Hashtags, die ich fr meine Posts und Kommentare ber Alt-Texte und Bildbeschreibungen nutze, folgt eh niemand. Und wenn, dann haben die Nutzer mich hchstwahrscheinlich gemutet oder geblockt.
Letztlich mte ich auch nicht nur Blinde und Sehbehinderte ins Boot holen, sondern auch die Mastodon HOA und deren Alt-Text-Polizei. Der geht es ja lngst nicht mehr darum, da berhaupt eine Bildbeschreibung da ist, sondern die schraubt kontinuierlich die Mindestkriterien fr akzeptable Bildbeschreibung nach oben. Und da will ich auch wissen, ob ich deren Segen habe, denn die entscheidet letzten Endes darber, wieviel Reichweite ich haben darf.
Und dann wird sich als Problem rausstellen, da ich der einzige in der ganzen Diskussion bin, der nicht auf Mastodon ist, und somit der einzige, der den ganzen Thread einsehen kann. Die anderen sehen voneinander die Kommentare nicht, und so gehen sie aufeinander nicht ein und diskutieren nicht miteinander, sondern nur mit mir. Sie werden gegenstzliche Vorstellungen haben, aber nichts auch nur davon ahnen, geschweige denn bemerken. Das wird dann also keine konstruktive Diskussion sein.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # Still, the headbutting was often justified for Mike. Unless, of course, you say that Mastodon is and has always been the one and only Fediverse gold standard and the one and only ActivityPub reference implementation.
I'll give you an example: In July, 2017, Mike's Hubzilla was the very first Fediverse server software to implement ActivityPub. Mike played strictly by the rules. As Hubzilla has a character limit of over 16.7 million and supports text formatting on the same level as the best long-form blogging platforms out there, he declared Hubzilla long-form and made Hubzilla send Article-type objects. Just as the spec demands.
In September, Mastodon became the second Fediverse server software to implement ActivityPub. But Gargron did not play by the rules. He only implemented a tiny subset of the protocol, namely what suited him. And he also broke it: Mastodon could display Article-type objects at their full length. But Gargron staunchly refused to implement any support for anything that goes beyond plain text. The ActivityPub spec explicitly says that Article-type objects are formatted. But Gargron wanted Mastodon to be a purist, minimalist, old-school, original-gangsta, Twitter-cloning microblogging platform. And stuff like bold type, italics, headlines, embedded in-line images or titles aren't purist, minimalist, old-school, original-gangsta, Twitter-cloning microblogging.
And so Mastodon took fully formatted, long-form-blog-style posts from Hubzilla and ripped everything out that wasn't plain text. It basically defaced Hubzilla posts. That is, it had been defacing Friendica and Hubzilla posts all the same ever since it was launched. But this time, there was a spec that actually defined what Mastodon was doing as wrong. And that spec had been finalised and pronounced a W3C standard meanwhile.
So Mike asked Gargron to please follow the official ActivityPub spec and make Mastodon support full HTML rendering for Article-type objects.
Gargron refused. Old-skool microblogging is plain text and only plain text, full stop.
This went back and forth. Eventually, Gargron presented a "solution": Mastodon now "renders" Article-type objects by showing the title and, right below, a link to the original. That is, basically not at all anymore. Of course, this meant that the vast majority of Mastodon users no longer read what came from Friendica and Hubzilla because they couldn't be bothered to open that link.
Mike saw this as a direct assault against Friendica and Hubzilla and an attempt at excluding both from "the Fediverse" which was almost entirely Mastodon at that point already. So he himself had to break the spec and make Hubzilla send Note-type objects instead so that Mastodon renders them at all. It still defaces them to this day.
(Friendica's solution was to send an Article-type object when a post has a title and a Note-type object when it doesn't have a title. Optionally, it can always send Note-type objects.)
By the way: This very same head-butting has returned. Not between Gargron and Mike, though, but between Gargron and much bigger players. Platforms like Flipboard and Ghost have introduced ActivityPub, and they send Article-type objects just as the ActivityPub spec demands. The same goes for WordPress. And, of course, they don't send plain-text "long tweets". They send fully formatted news articles and blog posts.
And now they demand Mastodon, as the biggest player in the Fediverse by user count, make their Article-type objects look just like they look at the source. They demand Mastodon not only render bold type, italics, headlines and the rest of the subset of text formatting that was introduced with Mastodon 4 in October, 2022. They also demand Mastodon show the titles and, most importantly, leave the images embedded within the articles in place, no matter how many they are.
This is no longer Gargron and his devs vs a guy in the Australian outback. This is Gargron and his devs who try hard to bend the Fediverse to their will and assume supreme control over it vs the Ghost Foundation, Flipboard, Inc. and Automattic, Inc. that play strictly by the ActivityPub rules. And I dare say that Automattic, Inc. alone has more money and more market power than Mastodon gGmbH and Mastodon, Inc. combined.
Mastodon has always gotten away with ignoring and breaking standards, re-inventing wheels and implying towards its religious followers that the whole Fediverse was built upon Mastodon and around Mastodon, and that everything that does things differently from Mastodon is inherently a broken add-on to Mastodon or an evil intruder. This time, they won't. And I guess they've actually taken it into consideration.
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Alles zu transkribieren ist nicht mglich und wohl auch Unsinn.
Mglich ist es durchaus, und ich mache es stndig. Das glaubt mir zwar keiner, und niemand kann sich vorstellen, wie ich das mache, aber ich mache es.
Auch Sehende filtern, erfassen wesentliche Details.
Darauf kann ich mich bei meinen Bildern nicht verlassen.
Wie gesagt: Fr die allermeisten Menschen da drauen ist das ein ganz neues unbekanntes Universum. Dazu kommen zwei Erkenntnisse. Zum einen: "Das Metaverse" ist gar nicht tot, wenn ich Bilder aus virtuellen 3-D-Welten zeigen kann. Zum anderen, wobei das nur Sehende betrifft: Was ich da zeige, sieht tausendmal besser aus als alles, was Zuckerberg so geteaset hat. Womglich htte derjenige nie damit gerechnet, da "das Metaverse" so aussehen kann.
Ich mu immer damit rechnen, da genau deshalb irgendjemand da drauen sich vor Aufregung und Neugierde kaum halten kann. Guckt der sich dann nur das an, was im Postkontext wichtig ist Mitnichten! Der nimmt all die groen und kleinen Details in Augenschein. Relevant oder nicht, das ist alles aufregend.
So, und dieselbe Chance, genau das zu tun, also all die groen und kleinen Details zu erfassen, egal, ob sie relevant sind oder nicht, mssen auch Blinde und Sehbehinderte haben. So definiert sich Barrierefreiheit, so definiert sich Inklusion.
Inhalte erfragen-Mssen steht im Widerspruch zur Teilhabe: Es ist normal, durch die Timeline zu scrollen, um mitzubekommen, was luft, ohne sich gleich an Diskussionen beteiligen zu mssen.
Und genau deswegen serviere ich alle Erklrungen und Beschreibungen, von denen ich glaube, da irgendjemand da drauen sie haben will, direktweg im Bildpost auf einem Silbertablett. Egal, wie weit ich ausholen mu.
Gut, das fhrt auch schon mal dazu, da ich mehr als 1000 Zeichen alleine brauche, um zu erklren, wo ein Bild gemacht wurde, weil ich sogar Erklrungen und Erklrungen von Erklrungen erklren darf.
Seit Ende letzten Jahres (!) arbeite ich immer mal wieder an den Beschreibungen fr eine Serie von Avatarportraits mit neutral-weiem Hintergrund. Ich habe also wirklich nur den Avatar zu beschreiben, denn das ist immer derselbe in immer derselben Pose. Bevor ich aber den Avatar beschreiben kann, brauche ich Erklrungen, damit die visuellen Beschreibungen berhaupt verstanden werden knnen. Das heit knapp 2000 Zeichen an Erklrungen, was das eigentlich fr ein Virtuelle-Welten-System ist, noch einmal an die 600 Zeichen, um den Aufnahmeort zu erklren (wo dann zumindest der weie Hintergrund erwhnt wird), und dann ber 9000 Zeichen, um zu erklren, wie in diesen Welten Avatare aufgebaut sind und funktionieren.
Das ist eben das Problem, das ich dadurch habe, da ich keine Real-Life-Fotos poste, sondern Bilder aus virtuellen Welten: Darber wei niemand irgendwas. Von 200.000 Fediverse-Nutzern wei einer auch nur, da es das Virtuelle-Welten-System, das ich nutze, auch nur gibt. Ansonsten mu ich alles bis auf die Grundlagen erklren.
Und blinde oder sehbehinderte Menschen wissen nicht, wie irgendetwas in diesen Welten aussieht. Woher sollen die das auch wissen Wenn ich also erwhne, was auf einem Bild ist, dann mu ich immer davon ausgehen, da jemand Blindes oder Sehbehindertes sich selbst oder mich fragt: "Okay, aber wie sieht das aus Wieso beschreibst du nicht direktweg, wie das aussieht"
Es gibt ja durchaus auch immer wieder Sachen auf meinen Bildern, die es in der realen Welt nicht gibt. Und die mu ich fr Blinde, Sehbehinderte und Sehende erklren, weil die nicht wissen, was das ist, und fr Blinde und Sehbehinderte visuell beschreiben, weil die nicht wissen, wie so etwas aussieht.
Ich knnte beispielsweise schreiben (ich poste normalerweise auf Englisch):
To the right of the avatar, there is an OpenSimWorld beacon.
Weit du, was ein OpenSimWorld-Beacon ist, was der macht, wofr der da ist Weit du, wie ein OpenSimWorld-Beacon aussieht
Weit du wahrscheinlich alles nicht. Wei annhernd niemand da drauen.
Also schreibe ich lieber das hier (und das ist ein Ausschnitt aus einer tatschlichen Langbeschreibung in ):
In front and partly to the right of the conifer, there is an object which doesn't exist in real life, but which is typical for OpenSimulator: an official OpenSimWorld beacon of the latest generation, but modified to fit the style of the sim.
This particular device has a shiny black foot with a long rectangular footprint which is about 80 percent as high as it is deep and tapered upward, and which has rounded edges. It carries the less shiny main body of the device. It starts narrower than the top surface of the foot in all directions. From bottom to top, it first protrudes forward and immediately increases in depth and slightly and curves backward and continues in a straight slope which still goes more upward than backward. Eventually, it curves upward and ends in a slim, rounded top. Transversally, it keeps the same width all the way. Both sides are carved out and illuminated, normally in cyan, here in almost white. Otherwise, it comes in its standard dark grey. However, it's actually a brownish anthracite grey, and the very top shows some light blue, so while it clearly hasn't received the monochrome treatment all over, a closer look also reveals that it should have. The same goes for the foot which is slightly bluish.
The straight section of the main body carries a shiny black frame with the central element of each OpenSimWorld beacon: the touch display with a ratio of 4:3. When not in use, this specimen shows the standard idle screen, only that it was modified to monochrome. Slightly above the middle, there is the official OpenSimWorld logo, namely the word "OpenSimWorld" itself with no actual caps. However, the "O" at the beginning is replaced with a circle matching the rounded sans-serif typeface which contains a stylised globe tilted to the left by an angle similar to Earth's inclination and showing three parallels and two meridians, but no land underneath. The last five letters, "world", are darker than the rest. Below it, in the same typeface, but in an even lighter grey, and without caps again, but a bit smaller, "teleporter" is written. Both lines also have shaded outlines that make them appear imprinted.
Further below, "Click for destinations" is written, still in the same type face and in about the same shade of grey as "OpenSim" above, but small enough to appear shorter than "teleporter" above. The background of the screen is a very light grey on the top 35 percent, medium grey on the bottom 35 percent and a gradient between the two. Clicking the screen breaks the monochrome theme, though, because the user interface which then appears has not been modified.
Lastly, there's a light grey panel on the front side of the foot which is scripted, too. It has "Like or comment this region" written on it in two lines in the same typeface as the writing on the touch screen, but with medium grey outlines. On the left, there is a medium grey thumb-up symbol, and on the right, there is a speech bubble with three dots in it in two shades of medium grey.
An OpenSimWorld beacon serves several purposes. For one, it transmits information about the sim to . This information includes not only the name of the sim and whether it's currently online, but also how many avatars are currently on the sim. The identities of these avatars are not transmitted, only how many they are. This makes finding sims with activity on them easier for users who want to go to parties or otherwise get into contacts with others, for OpenSim's general population density is much, much lower than Second Life's. This feature also helps generate rather controversial statistics about how popular any given sim is.
OpenSimWorld itself can be seen as the third-party centre of the decentralised Hypergrid. It started out about a decade ago as a sim catalogue, making navigating the Hypergrid and finding places much easier and more convenient than previous solutions like teleport stations or simply exchanging landmarks. Sims must be listed manually by registered users, and they need one OpenSimWorld beacon in-world. For example, is the entry for Black White Castle.
In addition, OpenSimWorld offers discussion forums, user-created information and discussion groups for various topics, announcements of in-world events, information about free or paid land rentals other than whole sim rentals by grids, a catalogue for in-world scripts etc.
The other purpose of an OpenSimWorld beacon is as a teleporter which gives you access to currently about 1,700 sims all over the Hypergrid by means of a crowd-sourced sim list, namely that on OpenSimWorld itself. If you click the touch screen, it shows a list with the ten sims known to OpenSimWorld with the most avatars on them. Each sim is listed with its activity ranking, its name, the letter "A" in square brackets if it is Adult-rated and the number of avatars on it. The list can be navigated page by page with always ten sims on them. However, while it gets the information it shows directly from OpenSimWorld, it doesn't show any further information, not about the sim and not about whatever event may be on-going on any given sim. Clicking on a listed sim will immediately teleport you there, but it won't tell you what the place is where the beacon is taking you.
After a while of inactivity, the touch screen switches back into its idle mode.
Clicking the panel on the foot leaves a like on the entry of the sim.
The shadow of the tallest mountain pine on the left-hand side of the pathway is cast on the OpenSimWorld beacon.
Und auch das wrde nicht funktionieren, htte ich nicht am Anfang der Langbeschreibung erklrt:
OpenSimulator is a free, open-source, cross-platform server-side re-implementation of the technology of . The latter is a commercial 3-D virtual world created by Philip Rosedale, also known as Philip Linden, of Linden Labs and launched in 2003. It is a so-called "pancake" virtual world which is accessed through desktop or laptop computers using standard 2-D screens rather than virtual reality headsets. Second Life had its heyday in 2007 and 2008. It is often believed to have shut down in late 2008 or early 2009 when the constant stream of news about it broke away, but in fact, it celebrated its 20th birthday in 2023, and it is still evolving.
, OpenSim in short, was first published in January, 2007. Unlike Second Life, it is not one monolithic, centralised world. It is rather a server application for worlds or "grids" like Second Life which anyone could run on either rented Web space or at home, given a sufficiently powerful computer and a sufficiently fast and reliable land-line Internet connection. This makes OpenSim as decentralised as the Fediverse. The introduction of the Hypergrid in 2008 made it possible for avatars registered on one OpenSim grid to travel to most other OpenSim grids.
Insgesamt ist diese Langbeschreibung brigens ber 25.000 Zeichen lang. Und das ist nicht mal eine meiner lngsten.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # Na ja, Kunst ist es nicht. Die Bilder sind illustrativ oder informativ oder beides, manchmal auch unterhaltsam.
Aber warum auch immer ich sie poste, ich rechne immer damit, da jemandem der Kontext komplett schnuppe ist. Immerhin sind das Bilder aus einer vllig unbekannten Welt, ganz zu schweigen vom bildlichen Beweis, da vllig unerwarteterweise virtuelle 3-D-Welten eben nicht tot sind. Dann wird sich nicht nur angeguckt, was im Kontext wichtig ist, sondern dann wird auf Entdeckungsreise gegangen und sich alles angeguckt, je nachdem, wie detailliert das Motiv ist.
Na ja, und Barrierefreiheit und Inklusion bedeutet ja letztlich, da Blinde oder Sehbehinderte exakt dieselben Chancen haben mssen, exakt dieselben Dinge zu tun wie Sehende. Das heit, sie mssen auch die Chancen haben, meine Bilder genau so zu erleben wie Sehende, egal, wie Sehende sie erleben. Alles andere wre ableistisch.
Allerdings beschreibe ich meine Bilder unabhngig von der Bildauflsung. Ich schreibe also nicht, was ich auf dem Bild sehe, sondern, was ich in-world sehe. Und da sehe ich alles mit einer sehr viel hheren Auflsung und kann auch mal an Hindernissen vorbeigucken.
Zum einen kann ich nicht davon ausgehen, da alle, die blind geboren wurden, ein Konzept von Bildauflsung haben. Wenn ich dann schreibe, da das Bild zu gering aufgelst ist, um an einer Stelle mehr Details zu zeigen, dann fhlt sich das immer an, als wollte ich mich aus der Affre ziehen. Also wird auch schon mal ein Erdbeercocktail als Erdbeercocktail beschrieben, auch wenn er im Bild selbst nur in Form von vier Pixeln zu sehen ist.
Zum anderen gibt es die Regel, da alles an Text in einem Bild wortwrtlich zu transkribieren ist. Als diese Regel aufgestellt wurde, wurde dabei allerdings nur an so Sachen wie abfotografierte Poster oder Screenshots von Social-Media-Posts gedacht. Das heit, es gibt keine Klausel darber, wie mit Text zu verfahren ist, der im Bild nicht lesbar ist, von dem, wer auch immer das Bild beschreibt, aber ganz genau wei oder in Erfahrung bringen kann, was da geschrieben steht.
Folglich mu ich die Regel so auffassen, da alles, was sich innerhalb der Umgrenzungen des Bildes befindet und auf irgendeine Art Text ist, transkribiert werden mu. Dann werden auch schon mal 20, 30 oder mehr einzelne Textschnipsel transkribiert und ggf. hinterher noch bersetzt, von denen dann nur zwei, drei einzelne Grobuchstaben wirklich lesbar sind. Auch wenn einiges an Text so winzig ist, da es schon der Bildbeschreibung bedarf, um berhaupt zu wissen, wo diese Textschnipsel eigentlich auf dem Bild sein sollen, werden sie trotzdem transkribiert.
Eigentlich ist das einfach nur stures Einhalten von Regeln, ohne ihre Anwendbarkeit zu hinterfragen. Aber weil gerade auch auf Mastodon gern auch Sehende Bildbeschreibungen lesen (wenn sie die Geduld haben), knnen auch sie von den Transkripten profitieren, weil nicht einmal das beste Adlerauge diese Textschnipsel lesen kann.
Letztlich habe ich hier die Erfahrung gemacht: Frag Mastodon-Nutzer, ob sie Zusatzinformationen lieber sich selbst raussuchen, aus verlinkten externen Quellen beziehen oder direkt im Post bekommen wollen. Dann werden sie nach meiner Erfahrung das Letztere bevorzugen. Also werden sie es auch bekommen.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # Meine eigenen Bilder sollten eigentlich fr Blinde und Sehbehinderte auch nicht von Interesse sein. Das ganze Thema sollte sie nicht interessieren, weil es ein sehr visuelles Thema ist. Es sind nmlich Renderings aus sehr obskuren virtuellen 3-D-Welten.
Trotzdem betreibe ich einen riesengroen Aufwand, um meine Bilder zu beschreiben, um auch wirklich jeden auf jedem Wissensstand abzuholen, damit auch wirklich jeder meine Bilderposts und meine Bildbeschreibungen versteht, ohne noch irgendwas googlen oder mich irgendwas fragen zu mssen. Ich will, da Blinde und Sehbehinderte meine Bilder mindestens so gut erleben knnen wie Sehende, und zwar egal, wie Sehende sie erleben, egal, was Sehende sich in meinen Bildern wie genau ansehen.
Meine Zielgruppe fr meine Bilder und meine Bildbeschreibungen umfat jeden, der zufllig ber meine Bilderposts stolpert. Und ich will, da jeder ohne fremde Hilfe mit meinen Bildern und mit meinen Bilderposts sofort zurechtkommt. Und so habe ich auch schon mal zwei volle Tage von morgens bis abends gebraucht, um ein einziges lumpiges Bild zu beschreiben.
Einige sagen: "Irgendwas ist besser als gar nichts." Aber nicht jeder sagt das. Andere Leute pochen nmlich auf grtmgliche Qualitt, sehr hohen Detailgrad und das perfekte Einhalten aller Regeln fr Bildbeschreibungen und Alt-Texte.
Problematisch wird es fr mich, wenn es darum geht, ausnahmslos jedes Bild 100% barrierefrei zugnglich fr ausnahmslos jeden Nutzer da drauen zu machen. Einerseits gibt's Leute, die mit lngeren Beschreibungen nicht klarkommen. Andererseits gibt's Leute, die sehr umfassende Erklrungen brauchen und sich die nicht zusammensuchen wollen. Und Informationen auerhalb des Post, in dem das Bild ist, sind mglicherweise zu schwer zugnglich, also mssen alle Informationen in den einen Post rein. Ich kann aber den vollen Informationsgrad von ber 60.000 Zeichen (und ja, ich habe schon mal ein Bild mit ber 60.000 Zeichen beschrieben) nicht auf maximal 200 Zeichen eindampfen.
Deswegen hatte ich schon die Vermutung, da es schlicht und ergreifend Bilder gibt, die an und fr sich nicht barrierefrei sind, weil es unmglich ist, sie perfekt barrierefrei zugnglich fr absolut jeden zu schreiben. Wenn dem so wre, drften solche Bilder nicht ins Fediverse gepostet werden, jedenfalls nicht so, da sie irgendjemanden auf Mastodon erreichen knnten.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # Today's screen readers no longer have any alt-text character limits anymore. Anything that claims that screen readers are limited to 80 or 125 or 200 characters per alt-text is hopelessly outdated. And as rarely as I post images, I keep getting away with nearly or exactly 1,500 characters, at least ca. 900 of which are actual description.
And I hardly ever get any feedback myself, especially not from those who actually use and need screen readers. But I could really use occasional feedback. For one, that's because I post extremely obscure niche material that's unlike anything you'll ever come across, and I'm basically the first Fediverse user ever to put some thoughts into how to properly describe this kind of image.
Besides, that's because I need to know if my combination of "short" image descriptions in fairly long alt-texts plus "long" image descriptions of tens of thousands of characters in the post itself with all necessary explanations and transcripts of all text is an appropriate way of describing the kind of images that I post. I mean, I'm probably the only one in the Fediverse who writes image descriptions so long that they need two levels of headlines.
The last time I got negative feedback was from a fully sighted user who probably wanted the whole Fediverse to be no more than 500 characters anywhere. Blind or visually-impaired users only give feedback if I ask them personally, and I point them at one or several of my image posts, and not even then always.
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Ancienne usine hydro-lectrique () Usine communale d'lvation d'eau et de production d'lectricit construite de 1901 1903 sur un bras de la Somme par les tablissements Dayd et Pill pour la ...
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Photo CC-BY-SA 4.0 : Markus3 (Marc ROUSSEL)
It's rather partially about the bragging rights.
But first and foremost, it's about making sure that your sim is visible on OpenSimWorld at all. This requires a self-contained loop. Your sim is "popular" on OpenSimWorld -> it's higher up on the list of the most popular sims -> it takes less time and effort to find it -> more avatars visit it -> the "popularity" on OpenSimWorld increases.
See, is not an actual list that you can scroll through. Rather, it is organised in pages of ten sims each. This means that from number 10 to number 11 on that list, it's a huge step because people will have to go one page further rather than being shown your sim right away. From 9 to 10 isn't a step at all because both are on the first page.
OpenSimWorld lists 1,800+ sims, but not even 50 of them really matter. If your sim is among the top 10 most "popular" sims and therefore on page one, the loop runs faster. If it slips below 50 most of the time, and you don't have regular music events that yank it up every now and then, you'd better have a faithful community already that visits your sim regardless.
It takes a whole lot of work for the actual popularity of your sim to be self-contained, for people coming piling in in droves even though your sim isn't even listed on OSW anymore because it's such a famous cult place that landmarks are being shared all the time. (Having teleporters on other comparable sims helps.) Until then, you'll need all the tricks in the book for your sim to not go under and fall into obscurity.
Either you can copybot all the newest, hottest, sexiest Legacy and LaraX stuff from SL, offer it exclusively as no-transfer freebies before someone else does and advertise the hell out of it on OSW almost daily. Or you can have more events with well over a dozen visitors per week than the week has days. Or if you can't do either, you'll have to make sure that there are constantly at least four avatars on your sim on average over 24 hours, this or that way.
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Jedenfalls, der erste Fehler ist, da du das /kbin-Magazin zum einen ber Eck ber Feddit anzuspielen versuchst und zum anderen gar nicht erwhnst.
Statt es als ber den Umweg ber Feddit zu verlinken, solltest du es wahrscheinlich eher a) direkt auf kbin.earth und b) erwhnen.
Mglicherweise funktioniert auch auf /kbin (das brigens eigentlich seit letztem Jahr mausetot ist und von jemand anders als Mbin weiterentwickelt wird) nur das Mastodon-nach-Lemmy-Schema:
Titel <-- erste Zeile ist immer der Titel
testingkbin.earth <-- zweite, separate Zeile ist die Erwhnung
eigentlicher Post <-- unter allem anderen und ohne Hashtags oder sonstige Erwhnungen# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # Locally writing content to the database of an ActivityPub-based server will inevitably require a local user account on that very server.
I mean, we already have which was invented by for in 2017, and which also has full implementations in his later server applications and and a client-side implementation on Mike's first project, . But without an actual account on another server, OpenWebAuth can only authenticate you on that other server as a guest and grant you certain guest permissions. It does not give you all the powers of a local user, at least not without a local account.
Also, if you want to actually log in on another server, you will inevitably need local login credentials on that server. Which means that a user account with these login credentials must be created prior to you logging in on that server so that that server knows your login name and your password. Even if you want to use something like OAuth, that server will still require to know your credentials. They will have to be in that server's database before you can successfully log in.
A server cannot and will not authenticate you against credentials in a wholly different remote server's database. What you and many other Fediverse users dream of can only be solved in two ways and both only theoretically because, in practice, they are just as impossible or at least very unfeasible.
Either if you register an account on one Fediverse server, that account with the exact same credentials is simultaneously created on literally all other Fediverse servers, and on Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte, you also automatically get a channel along with that account. This also means that each Fediverse server that's installed and spun up for the first time will immediately have to create tens of millions of accounts so that everyone all over the Fediverse automatically has login credentials on that server. I guess it should be clear that this is impossible, also because this requires a) a centralised list of absolutely all Fediverse accounts and identities and b) a centralised list of all Fediverse servers to be hard-coded into every last instance of every last Fediverse server out there.
Now, I keep reading stuff like, "But I don't want to use all Fediverse servers!" No, but you want to be able to use any Fediverse server. And then you will have to have an account there. How is the Fediverse supposed to know in advance which servers you will visit this year, the next two years, five years, ten years so that accounts can be automatically created for you exactly there and nowhere else
See And that's why, if you want to be able to use any server like with a local account, every server must be prepared for it before you arrive.
Or drive-by registration: You visit a Fediverse server for the first time, your active login is recognised by that Fediverse server, and an account is created for you on the fly with the exact same login credentials as where you're already logged in. That's its own can of worms.
Also, it requires remote authentication. OpenWebAuth. As I've already said: This is technology that's eight years old, and that's being daily-driven right now. But: You will never have this on Mastodon. It was never merged. It was silently rejected by the Mastodon developers. The PR was closed in November, 2024.
Some people go even further: They don't just want their login credentials wherever they go, they want their whole identity cloned to everywhere. They want all their stuff, all their posts and comments and DMs, all their followers and followed, all their settings, all their filters etc. etc. pp., they want it everywhere all the same. Like a (an invention by Mike from 2011, first implemented in 2012) across up to 30,000 servers.
Now, you and many others on Mastodon are probably going to cry out, "YES, YES, PLEASE MAKE THIS REALITY!"
But seriously: I myself have actually cloned enough Hubzilla and (streams) channels of mine in my time. None of them even had nearly as much content on them as your Mastodon account. And I can tell from a lot of personal experience that this cannot be done within a blink of an eye.
Nomadic identity won't come to Mastodon anyway. Nomadic identity via ActivityPub is probably being daily-driven already. Forte has it, and it relies on it. But Mastodon will never implement it. In particular, Mastodon would rather re-invent the "nomadic identity" wheel in a way that's incompatible with what we already have than implement something made by Mike Macgirvin. Not after all the head-butting that has happened between Mike and Gargron over the years.
And OpenWebAuth won't come to Mastodon either. Probably also for the same reason.
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Feedback: The Secret Weapon - Meta CFO Susan Li
-termemployment
Hatte diaspora* damals wirklich die ganzen Verbindungsmglichkeiten Ist schon so lange her.Ich staune auch darber, da Friendica damals noch die Facebook-Erweiterung hatte und es doch einen ganzen Batzen Red-Matrix-Server gab. Sean Tilley hatte einen, der spter auch mal Hubzilla-Themes gebaut hat, Farthinghale Arms ist wohl auch irgendwann zu Hubzilla upgegradet worden, und Els Mussols, heute auf (streams), existierte auch schon in der Red Matrix.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #Okay. So NakedWorldz Grid is going to shut down on Monday.
This must have been decided only a few days ago, no more a week before the actual shutdown, maybe only five days. There was no public announcement, this must have only gone out to the various sim owners in the grid, and (notice all the invites to other grids in the comments). It isn't even clear if sim owners can get or make OARs of their sims. All sims run by the grid owners have been pulled from OpenSimWorld two days ago or so. They're still online, but they're no longer advertised anywhere.
But seriously, it was clear that this grid wouldn't last for long. What's essentially the main landing sim is a "family-friendly nudist" sim. Officially, this means, "Nudity yes, anything sexual no." Officially, the idea was that people could go there and play "family on a nudist beach". Hence, it's "only" Moderate-rated whereas pretty much all other sims around the Hypergrid that officially allow nudity are Adult-rated. In fact, so are many that don't.
Now, if you've experienced a few "family-friendly nudist" places in OpenSim, you could have expected how this actually played out. If there are avatars on the main landing sim for a prolonged time, it most likely includes grid staff. As child avatars. Butt-naked kids. Staff.
Also, their "official" freebie sim offers everything you'd need for a naked child avatar. Not stashed away behind a door or so. Out in the open. And that freebie store is only one room with no walls separating anything. And it's organised neatly enough that I'd have a hard time believing that whoever put that stuff up had no idea what it is. On some boxes, the frigging box art says it all. I mean, I know that hardly any "stuff found all around the Hypergrid" freebie store owners curate anything they slap against their walls, but still.
Whenever such a place is launched, I take three possibilities into consideration:
- This is a sincere nudism project, and the owners are too nave and not OpenSim-savvy enough to know that this will inevitably imply paedophilia, and/or that this may or may not count as CSAM under Western legislations.
- This is a sincere nudism project, and the owners want to try hard to make sure this does not come over as paedophilia and convince everyone that this is every bit as harmless as a real-life nudist camp because they know about the implications.
- This is actually a false front for a paedo place.
Seriously, the more often I see something like this be launched, just to pull the plug on rather short notice, the harder I find it to believe in the first two options. Still, quite a few OpenSim users flocked to NakedWorldz and acquired either a free parcel of land or a whole sim. More than half the landmass of the grid is rented land.
I remember a few more places with similar concepts. All of them have vanished into thin air with no shutdown announcements. That is, I remember that one of them has moved to another grid which was entirely unknown to the OpenSim community with not even one single sim listed on OpenSimWorld no idea if that grid still exists, much less that sim. Anyway, this was the first time I recall that someone actually launched a grid for such a concept. The fact that we're talking about a grid of its own with land rentals may be why it wasn't shut down spontaneously: The tenants had to be considered and taken care of. Closing a grid with rented sims on it from one moment to the next with no announcment whatsoever is bad style.
The fact that a grid was built around the premise of "family-friendly nudism" makes it rather clear that we aren't talking about complete OpenSim newbies here, not only because you have to know how to run a grid (and be it a DreamGrid), but also because if you want to build a naked child avatar, you really have to know where to look for the ingredients. And why would someone go to such length and start their own grid for such a purpose Because they probably know exactly that a sim with this concept isn't welcome in any existing grid. So navet wasn't in play here.
By the way, there definitely used to be paedos in OpenSim, including at least one convicted one, and that's a fact. Avatars of mine have encountered two different flavours of these. No matter whether they're gone or still around under new guises, but it isn't unlikely that there still are some.
In fact, they're the reason why many sim owners in OpenSim have "re-defined" the ratings which OpenSim has taken over from Second Life. The Adult rating now stands for "no child avatars allowed" first and foremost. And in fact, it often only stands for that. We're approaching a point at which fewer Adult-rated sims allow nudity anywhere than not. Quite often, the Adult rating means "PG-rated, but no child avatars allowed".
Sim owners get away with this easily because the vast majority of grids don't have any definition of their own for these ratings. It used to be consensus that Second Life's definitions are OpenSim's definition. It seemed futile to write that down. The only grid that did is DigiWorldz, and even DigiWorldz allows for bending these definitions all the way to rating a G-rated sim Adult for whichever reason. And the days when nudists could enter Adult-rated sims butt-naked, be kicked and banned for breaking an unwritten "no nudity" rule and subsequently have the sim downrated from Adult to Moderate by force both by the grid owners and on OpenSimWorld seem to be over.
That said, there are also paedo witch hunters in OpenSim who are way overzealous in their definitions of what constitutes an underage avatar. They have criteria like avatar height under 1.80m (if they're Europeans)/6 feet (if they're Americans), measured the Second Life way up to the eyes rather than the OpenSim way up to the top of the head, an Athena/LaraX Petite or Legacy Perky body, a skin without a deep tan, sneakers or generally footwear without heels of at least 15cm or 6 inches on a female avatar, a hairstyle that isn't a long lush sexy mane or an outfit that doesn't max out an avatar's sexiness or badassness. If at least one or two criteria on this list are met, your avatar is a kid, and you're a paedo.
Who may be behind the sudden closure of NakedWorldz, I don't know. Maybe the grid was bullied out of OpenSim. Maybe there were actually legal threats against the grid that came in time for the grid to shut down at the end of the month. Maybe someone acquired information about the grid owners that I don't have (maybe they were actually behind earlier "family-friendly nudism" projects as well) and threatened or blackmailed them.
Fact is, however, that it's a grid with a rather questionable concept that was launched into a network of virtual worlds where not exactly few people don't even tolerate a tiny fraction of that concept.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # #Na ja, RaccoonForFriendica ist noch hochgradig unfertig, egal, fr welches System.
Und FediLab ist mehr so eine Allgemein-App, die will einiges jeweils ein bichen abdecken, aber nichts davon vollumfnglich. Und die Filter in Friendica drften ziemlich anders funktionieren als die fr Mastodon, fr die die Filtersteuerung in FediLab wohl primr ausgelegt ist.
Du knntest dir statt dessen Relatica angucken.
Hast du einen PC Einen Laptop Oder ist dein Smartphone dein einziges digitales Endgert Sonst wrde ich nmlich sagen, nimm den PC/Laptop zwischendurch mal fr gelegentliche Einstellungs- und Konfigurationsgeschichten, die du nicht stndig brauchst. Oder frag irgendjemanden aus deinem Bekanntenkreis, ob du da fr solche Sachen mal eben an den PC oder Laptop kannst.
Jedenfalls gibt es keine Android-App, die Friendicas vollen Funktionsumfang komplett auf einer nativen Android-Oberflche abbildet.
(Disclaimer: alles ungetestet. Ich bin hier auf Hubzilla an einem Debian-PC.)
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # OpenSim has a similar problem, but it's even harder to solve.
has a very basic ranking system for . It isn't for specific parcels, it's for entire sims. The problem, of course, is that it can be manipulated very easily, and it is actually being manipulated constantly.
The ranking "algorithm" is very simple: It only counts how long how many avatars are present. It does not even recognise individual avatars, much less IPs. Also, it allows for sims to rise in popularity very quickly: One sufficiently big event, and they're in the top 10.
There are many ways of manipulating this algorithm, including:
- telling your friends to park their avatars on your sim ( is not much more than an avatar storage for OSgrid residents to make sure that it's always the number one most "popular" sim)
- using alts as "sim decoration" where NPCs (unlike Second Life, OpenSim supports actual NPCs) or even only animesh would do the same job
- parking alts on a sky platform for which only you have a landmark
- dropping a few alts that are basic Ruths with running numbers in their names under a pier where you think nobody will look
If you host your sim yourself, or if you're even the grid owner, the Radegast viewer is your friend. Install it next to OpenSim and automatically launch a bunch of instances right after your region server has come online. Instant top 10 ranking if you do that with at least four avatars.
Of course, this goes along with claiming either that you don't care for ranking or that it's regular visitor traffic.
A trick that has never been that popular is to make visitors camp on your sim. Offer content on your sim for in-world "Monopoly money". Give visitors a limited amount of that money to whet their appetite. And then give them the chance to earn more money by doing something on your sim for long enough. I've seen this come with a time limit to ensure that the camping is not too obvious, but this also means that you'll have to come back often to earn some more money.
I think there may still be some scoundrels who try to acquire older versions of the OSW beacon that still count NPCs as avatars, or who try to modify newer versions into counting NPCs as avatars. However, OSW no longer recognises these older beacons, and it will ban your sim if you use a hacked beacon.
That is, you can also report sims which obviously cheat their traffic figures to the OSW admin who will then turn the visitor counter for that sim permanently off. However, when a sim owner discovers that this has happened, they do what they also do after one negative comment or review or zero-star rating: They delete the whole entry and make a new one for the same sim. This comes with extra the advantage of the sim also being listed among the .
By the way, this feature was introduced after someone exposed the system of popularity rigging with alts by dropping 60 alts on one OSW-listed sim. And I guess countermeasures against this were mostly demanded by high-ranking OSgrid residents because it took that sim mere hours to outrank Lbsa Plaza.
Unfortunately, many of your suggestions for counter-measures wouldn't work in OpenSim.
- OpenSim does have picks and ads, and you can pick sims anywhere around the Hypergrid. But OpenSim has no centralised first-party infrastructure that has access to the picks and ads of all avatars on the Hypergrid, much less on all OpenSim grids. OpenSimWorld is third-party, and it has even less of a chance to harvest all this data from all avatars out there.
Seeing as how few avatars have picks in the first place, this could also easily be rigged by making a hundred alts with the same picks and stashing them away on a private sim with no OSW entry. - Second Life's event registration is something that has never been implemented in OpenSim. OSW does have its own event calendar including announcing events on specific sims. But this would rank popular event sims higher than popular freebie sims. And not all events on OSW-listed sims are listed on OSW either.
- Counting unique visitors is out of question, too. Nobody would want a third party like OSW to know which avatars were on any given sim at which time, also seeing as theoretically anyone who knows a bit about scripting could latch onto the data generated by an OSW beacon and use it to track down avatars.
- Adjusted visitor time and interaction events can be rigged, too. OpenSim has its own scripting language, OSSL, which builds upon LSL, but with tons of extra features. You know AVsitter That sit animation controller OpenSim has which largely does the same plus tons of stuff that are unimaginable in Second Life. The host and presenter avatars at the last OSCC were entirely automated by "sit scripts". These scripts even make interaction with other objects possible. And I bet that OSSL can even be used to automate avatars through attachments without them having to sit down. Just about everything that requires manual interaction in Second Life can be automated in OpenSim.
In fact, if actual movement (as opposed to animations) counts, then events will be heavily downranked anyway. I mean, what do people do at DJ events in OpenSim
- They either sit their avatars down on dance pads or a line dance floor.
- Or they use a Clubmaster to launch a dance animation. Oftentimes, they keep the same dance animation running throughout the entire event.
- Or they use a Clubmaster to rez a pair of dance balls and sit down on one. In this case, you can only measure how often the animations are switched, and many simply put the Clubmaster on automatic anyway.
- Or they use a dance HUD which may or may not automatically change dance animations.
- A few use Firestorm's viewer AO feature to switch to a self-made dance AO.
Many actually leave the music running in the background and do something else in the meantime. Others only interact by gestures or "Yay" confetti throwers or other scripted attachments I mean, that's at least something.
In fact, I know someone who sometimes sends one avatar to a DJ event and then another avatar with the same identity, but from another grid, to a non-DJ event and only actually operates the latter one. That same someone has also sent an avatar to a five-hour DJ event and then gone AFK to attend a nearby real-life music festival for some two hours and actually announced it.
Even I sometimes have avatars at two events at the same time I focus more on the event which requires switching dance animations and turn the music from the other one down. But even when I attend the same event with two avatars (I can't go anywhere alone without people asking where is, how she's doing and when she'll come), both contribute to the local chat occasionally, and we do change dance animations along with the music (unless the DJ plays four hours of house or something).
Due to the abundance of event locations, DJ events can actually last quite long, sometimes three, four or more hours with one DJ. So a 90-minute threshold would be counter-productive.
All in all, it's next to impossible to implement fair and realistic sim rating that cannot be rigged in a decentralised system of virtual worlds where just about everything is third-party.
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CU LONG THN QUN ch nh may mn cng nhng m nhn bi to!!
CU LONG THN QUN - ch nh may mn cng nhng m nhn bi to !! Your browser does not support HTML video. CU LONG THN QUN - ch nh may mn cng nhng m nhn bi to !!
The main reason devs haven't wanted to use the C2S API in the AP spec is network effect. Clients devs don't want to use it because Mastodon doesn't, and servers devs don't want to use it because their services wouldn't work with all the clients following the Mastodon API.
It's actually tempting to imagine a vicious circle here: If almost everything has the Mastodon client API implemented, it isn't worth developing dedicated client apps that also cover other servers' extra features.
Instead, the reason why all kinds of server applications have the Mastodon client API implemented is because they absolutely need some phone apps that work with them. Just look around the Fediverse. Almost everyone is exclusively on phones nowadays. And especially iPhone users wouldn't touch a Web browser with a 10-foot barge pole if they don't absolutely have to, so expecting them to use the Web UI means you're stuck in a bubble or a time where smartphones are still a gimmick.
That's why even Friendica has implemented the Mastodon client API. I mean, Mastodon and Friendica are very different, and the Mastodon client API only covers a small fraction of what Friendica can do. It actually doesn't cover some critical everyday features.
At the same time, there's little to no incentive for those who can develop mobile apps to make apps for anything that isn't Mastodon. Many start working on Fediverse apps at a point when they still believe the Fediverse is only Mastodon. Or if they don't, at least they've never heard of Pleroma and its family, Misskey and its family, Friendica and its family (where Hubzilla would require a wholly different app than Friendica, and (streams) and Forte would require a wholly different app than both) etc. Or they genuinely think that developing the umpteenth iPhone app for Mastodon is worth the effort more than developing the first stable dedicated iPhone app for Friendica. It's a miracle that stuff like Aria for the *key family exists.
It seems like of all the server apps that don't do *blogging (purist long-form blogging stuff like WriteFreely excluded), Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte are the only ones that don't have the Mastodon client API implemented. And I can't see them do it. For one, their devs steer clear of all proprietary, non-standard Mastodon technology. But other than that, these three are even less like Mastodon than Friendica, and they work even less like Mastodon. Even using a Mastodon app for stuff like basic posting is out of question because it pretty much requires access to the per-post permission settings, something that Mastodon doesn't have implemented, and therefore, neither do the apps for it.
Now, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte can be installed as so-called Progressive Web Apps. But only Hubzilla veterans ever do that, and that's for three reasons: One, next to nobody has ever heard of the very concept of PWAs. Two, all that people know is installing apps from the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store. And three, people want native mobile interfaces in the style of whatever phone they use. It doesn't matter how well the Web UIs of these three adapt to mobile screens, especially since 90% of all phone users have totally forgotten that you can rotate a phone sideways.
Hubzilla actually has its own client API, and I think (streams) and forte have their own one, too. But nobody has ever even only tried to build a native mobile app for either of them. Hubzilla's devs even have to admit that they don't know how well Hubzilla's client API works because there has literally never been a sufficiently-featured counterpart to test it against. All there is is an extremely basic Android app built by one of them that's available as a download somewhere, and all it can do is send very basic posts, I think, even only at your default settings. It's just a proof of concept.
The ActivityPub C2S API is just as untested.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # Long
Elon Musk warns of population collapse due to falling birth rates: Have 3 kids to make up for
MuTech billionaire Elon Musk has raised concerns about what he considers humanitys most serious existential threat, falling birth
-termextinction
Here on Hubzilla, I see the whole thread as one right away, all the way to the start post, without having to look at it at its origin.
The only improvement that I'm waiting for is the tree-style view that'll soon be rolled out with Hubzilla 10.4 (Friendica, (streams) and Forte already have tree-style views whereas Hubzilla had a strictly chronological thread view until the recent RCs).
# # # # # # # # # # # In the words of a diaspora* developer, if Mozilla and Vivaldi "implemented ActivityPub", they'd actually "implement Mastodon". That'd mean catching more users with less effort than implementing vanilla ActivityPub and implementing features that Mastodon doesn't have. Besides, both used to have or still have a Mastodon server, but they don't seem to be aware that there's a Fediverse beyond Mastodon, much less what it's like and how it works.
In fact, they wouldn't even implement the ActivityPub C2S API at all. They'd implement the Mastodon client API and only the Mastodon client API.
CC:
# # # # # # # # # # # # This may come as a surprise to you, but: The Fediverse is not only Mastodon. And it has never been only Mastodon. It was neither invented by Eugen Rochko nor exclusively for purist microblogging.
For example, there is also Friendica (, , , ). It was launched in July, 2010, 15 years ago, five and a half years before Mastodon. It is Facebook-like, but designed to be better than Facebook rather than an all-out clone and to be fully capable of long-form blogging. It has a character limit of 200,000, its culture does not enforce brevity, and it staunchly refuses to ditch its own culture and adopt Mastodon's culture instead. It can also do other things that don't belong into purist microblogging such as bold type, italics, underlines, bullet-point lists and multiple levels of headlines.
Here are lists of Friendica nodes for you to block:
Then there is Hubzilla (, , ), first launched in March, 2015, ten years ago, ten months before Mastodon. It's based on Friendica with many more features that make it a CMS as well. It has a character limit of over 16.7 million (maximum size of the database field).
I'm commenting from Hubzilla myself right now.
Here are lists of Hubzilla hubs for you to block:
More recently and from the same family, there are (streams) () from 2021 and Forte () from 2024. Again, they are Facebook-like, just like Friendica. Their character limit is over 24 million.
Again, here are lists of servers for you to block:
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # Das ist so hnlich, wie ich es mache.
Nur sind meine "Kurzbeschreibungen" im Alt-Text auch schon mal so lang wie die ausfhrlichen Beschreibungen von und .
Die langen Beschreibungen stehen nicht im Alt-Text, sondern im Post selbst. Wenn du dir meine Bilderposts (die nicht mehr ber diesen Kanal kommen, sondern ber und auch das nur selten, weil es jedes Mal ein Riesenaufwand ist) statt auf Mastodon direkt an der Quelle auf (streams) ansiehst, wirst du die langen Beschreibungen normalweise in einem Block direkt unterhalb der Bilder finden.
Die enthalten volle Wort-fr-Wort-, ja, sogar Zeichen-fr-Zeichen-Transkripte von jedem bichen Text innerhalb der Umgrenzungen des Bildes. Die enthalten alle Erklrungen, die ntig sind, damit jemand komplett Uninformiertes sowohl das Bild als auch die Beschreibung versteht. Visuell beschrieben ist in den Bildern beinahe alles, und zwar nicht so, wie es auf dem Bild zu sehen ist, sondern so, wie ich es direkt vor Ort gesehen habe, also auch unabhngig von der Bildauflsung.
Unterm Strich kommen meine langen Beschreibungen so ziemlich immer auf eine fnfstellige Anzahl an Zeichen. Die sind so lang, die haben Zwischenberschriften. Ich habe auch schon mal zwei ganze Tage gebraucht, um ein einziges Bild zu beschreiben. Dies zum Thema "das geht in ein paar Sekunden".
Und ja, es gibt Leute, die so detaillierte Beschreibungen zu schtzen wissen. Ich bin mir sogar ziemlich sicher, da es Leute gibt, die so detaillierte Beschreibungen brauchen.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
BoE echoes central banks long bond sensitivity: Mike Dolan
(The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters.) LONDON, June 26 (Reuters)
-durationgovernmentdebt
A few months ago I talked about a BIG THING I was writing.
Well, I finished a second draft, and it feels ready enough for people to read. It's called:
'Why Free-Culture: Art, Knowledge and Culture as Commons'.
It's the longest thing I have written and I am happy with it, but it is not the final version. Here's a link to read it:
There's also the .odt file in that repository, so do what you will with it! It is licensed CCBYSA 4.0. You can also see v0.1 in case you're curious about changes.
I would love any feedback anyone would care to give me, so please share far and wide. :)
Thanks for your time, and solidarity!
:boostok:
is to and 5. Let's see it takes until he that again
You just 't on someone like that
If you want something more versatile with a built-in image host/file host, if you don't mind it not being a specialised, purist blogging solution, you may check the "Facebook alternative, but better than Facebook and with a side of long-form blogging" parts of the Fediverse: Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams), Forte.
Plume is similarly purist as WriteFreely, it features both comments and a built-in image storage, but its development has come to a halt, and its own devs recommend WriteFreely.
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
I would argue that had we a good account portability model that solved also post history, there would be no need for a centralized onboarding. Don't like your local community or service provider Migrate somewhere else. Bluesky does have this slightly better thought out, if not yet practically proven.
What Bluesky has as a vague concept that's far from being implemented can't hold a candle to what Hubzilla has had for 13 years now. 12 years of stable releases. What it has passed on to a whole number of forks and forks of forks, all by the same creator, of which the streams repository of 2021 and Forte of 2024 still exist. As of Forte, it works entirely via ActivityPub without requiring its own protocol, and it should theoretically even work between servers of different types (if there was anything else with an ActivityPub nomadic identity implementation to clone and move from and to).
We have an account portability model (only not for accounts as in logins see below). We have it in spades. We have it beyond everyone's wildest imagination. And it has been daily-driven by Fediverse users for much longer than most of you have been on Mastodon.
The real issues are: It relies on separating your identity (posts, comments, DMs, settings, connections, files, filters etc. etc.) from your login/account, but just about everywhere that isn't Hubzilla, (streams) or Forte, they're firmly welded together, and separating them is next to unthinkable. And even if that wasn't an issue, Mastodon would still never adopt it, and be it because Eugen Rochko refuses to accept anything that's Mike Macgirvin's brain-child.
CC:
# # # # # # # # # # # # # It has been solved by Friendica for 15 years. Five and a half years longer than Mastodon has been around.
It has been solved by Hubzilla for 10 or 13 years, depending on what you count as Hubzilla's first release.
It has been solved by the other members in the family just as well.
There even is an FEP for that which is based on how (streams) and Forte do it: .
CC:
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Trump Appointee Prosecuting LA Protesters Defended Jan. 6 Suspects
As an attorney, Bi
:ArticlePost :Tuesday :English :Article :Factiva :SmartNews :SocialFlow :Justice :Politics :16.00 :1000-1999
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