Jupiter Rowland

What this channel is about, what it means that it's on Hubzilla and not on Mastodon, how I (don't actually) follow you back when you follow me; long (~14,000 characters in one post); CW: tech, FLOSS, a11y meta, alt-text meta, sensitivity meta, content warning meta, CW meta, mentions of memes/religion/science/history/philosophy/eye contact/public display of affection/family/food/alcohol/cats/health/medicine/work

I've figured that I need a proper #introduction post for those who come from outside, and that's nearly everyone.

First of all: This is not someone's single, general, all-purpose, personal channel. This channel was created to specialise in the topics of #VirtualWorlds in general and, more specifically, those based on #OpenSimulator. And you can consider me not much more than an #OpenSim #avatar.

OpenSimulator (see also here) is a free, open-source and decentralised re-implementation of #SecondLife, created around Second Life's own viewer API after Linden Labs made the official Second Life viewer open-source. It was launched in January, 2007, and most OpenSim-based world, usually called grids, have been federated with one another since the introduction of the #Hypergrid in 2008. One could say that it is to Second Life what Mastodon is to Twitter, and what #Lemmy is to Reddit, only that the UI can be almost identical, and the UX is even more similar.

I've been in OpenSim since April 30th, 2020. By the way, I'm not in Second Life, and I've never been there.

I also have a blog about OpenSim in German language that's somewhat dormant currently, but I still have a lot to write and post about.

I occasionally post about the #Fediverse with which I mean the Fediverse beyond #Mastodon. That's when I have to say something that nobody else says.

Some of my posts contain memes. Sometimes it's easier to express something in one image macro than in 5,000 words.

I don't post about real life. I may occasionally comment posts about real life, but I don't post about it.


Where I am: Those of you who come across my channel in their Web browsers in search of my profile (which is here, by the way), will most likely see it right away. But those who see this post in their Mastodon timelines won't, so it's only fair to mention it here:

I'm not on Mastodon. Yes, I'm someplace that's connected to Mastodon, but I'm not on Mastodon proper. So some of you might learn it from this post: #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse which means that the Fediverse is not on Mastodon.

Instead, I'm using a project named #Hubzilla (see also the official website). It has tons of features that Mastodon doesn't have, including some that are highly requested on Mastodon such as full-text search, quotes, text formatting like you wouldn't believe, #SingleSignOn and #NomadicIdentity. It practically doesn't have any character limits at all. Also, it's older than Mastodon. It had its 1.0 release in December, 2015, more than half a year before Mastodon, and it was renamed from a project named #RedMatrix that was launched as early as 2012, about four years before Mastodon.


What it means that I'm on Hubzilla: Next to my hashtags and mentions looking weird in comparison to what you're used to on Mastodon, the biggest "side-effect" of this is that my posts can grow truly massive for Mastodon standards. I don't do threads when I have to write a lot. I don't have to. Long posts are fortunately still something that Mastodon displays correctly even if you can't write them on most Mastodon instances. And I could write posts with tens of thousands of characters. So I won't do that.

This post is longer than 28 Mastodon toots, and as you can see, I didn't break it down into a thread of well over 30 single posts.

That is, if I really have to write something that's akin to a blog post with lots of embedded pictures, while I can do that as a regular post, I'll do it as a long-form article and then link to it. I know that some of you mobile app users don't like your Web browser popping open, but trust me when I say it's the best solution, also due to what Mastodon does with embedded images which it can't display as such. Besides, I don't force you to tap that link to my newest article.


How I handle images: Which takes us to images. It's here where I do acknowledge some of Mastodon's limitations, seeing as roughly 99% of the recipients of my posts are on Mastodon, what with how many newbies indiscriminately follow everything they come across to get their personal timeline busy, and others following me with the belief that I'm a Fediverse guru first and foremost.

I no longer post more than four pictures at once. That's because Mastodon can't handle more than four pictures in one post.

I still embed the pictures someplace in my posts that is not at the bottom. The bottom is for hashtags which I haven't already used in the text. Yes, I make a lot of use of hashtags for everyone's convenience, and I always write them in CamelCase when appropriate and/or necessary. As for the embedded pictures, sometimes I explain in my posts where which picture that you'll find at the bottom of the post in reverse order should be where in the text, but I don't always do that.


How I handle alt-text and image descriptions: I always add #AltText to images, even though Hubzilla doesn't offer a dedicated UI element for that. I always give #ImageDescriptions. However, I don't necessarily put the #ImageDescription into the alt-text. I want my image descriptions to be detailed and informative so that everyone knows and understands what's in the picture.

However, my in-world pictures in particular might be very detailed, and since they were taken in places that next to nobody in the Fediverse knows, they might be full of stuff that needs to be mentioned, described and explained. Mobile users in particular like detailed image descriptions if the images themselves take too long or entirely refuse to load due to poor network performance. Also, good image description style demands all text anywhere in a picture be fully transcribed and, if it isn't in English, translated. I transcribe and translate text that even I can't see in a picture, much less read; I guess, a full transcription is even more justified in this case. An in-world sign that's a 5x3-pixel speck in the picture? An scripted button, in-world again, that's a 4x2-pixel speck? I transcribe and translate them. How else are you supposed to know what's written on them?

So the descriptions for these images may grow too long for alt-text, not only longer than Mastodon's 1,500-character limit, but longer than what any Fediverse front-end could possibly display, and way too long to be convenient for #ScreenReader users. My current record for an image description is 13,215 characters.

Also, I've been told that alt-text isn't really that accessible, for many sighted Fediverse users simply can't access it at all, especially mobile users who don't have a mouse cursor to hover on an image. So any image description in alt-text is lost to them.

The most accessible method of posting image descriptions is right within the post itself in plain sight for everyone. I consider it bad style-wise unless a post is explicitly about the picture that's being described which rarely is the case here. But since many demand this, I'll do it from now on until enough people complain about it and say that they'd prefer me to put my image descriptions elsewhere and link to them. The alt-text will mention that here's an image, and the description is in the text. If there are multiple images, the alt-text will give them identifiers so that you know which image is being described when and where.

But I will neither shorten my image descriptions and remove information from them to satisfy the "alt-text must describe the image" crowd, nor will I provide redundant double descriptions by describing an image within the 1,500-character limit in the alt-text and then again in more details outside the alt-text.


How I handle sensitive content and content warnings: Basically, not at all. At least not the Mastodon way.

Hubzilla does have what Mastodon calls #CW. It has had it from its inception as the #RedMatrix in 2012. In fact, #Friendica, which the Red Matrix was forked from, and which had the same creator as the Red Matrix/Hubzilla, had it in 2010 already. It serves a different purpose there, namely to provide summaries for very long posts. But the functionality is largely the same.

However, as far as I can judge, I don't post sensitive text. I write about tech, not about politics or culture or social topics. And, again, I don't write about the real, non-digital world. I've yet to read that any of what I'm writing about may trigger people to the degree that a #ContentWarning would be necessary.

As for images, I can't do anything about them. No, really, I can't. Even if I put a summary on a post which Mastodon will make into a CW, and I put images in that post, Mastodon will show these images unblurred in plain sight for everyone. This is an issue on Mastodon's side. I can't do anything about it. I can have Hubzilla users click two or three times, depending on their own settings, before they can see these images unblurred. Up to four times if I add a spoiler tag on top. At the same time, Mastodon throws the same images in the same post into everyone's faces in their full glory.

That is, the only thing I could do about that is not post images that may count as sensitive for someone out there at all. The problem with this is that the amount of visual content that may count as sensitive constantly grows more and more, and I don't have a full list of it. If I were to stop posting anything that could offend or trigger someone, I might have to stop posting memes altogether because memes/image macros in general trigger some people and specific ones trigger others. Also, I couldn't post pictures taken on medieval or village or urban sims if there's a church in sight which might trigger people who find religion in general or Christianity as a whole offensive. I couldn't post pictures of the famous Sendalonde Community Library, not because that'd require a massive wall of text just to describe the building, but because it may contain books about science, history or philosophy.

Also, I can't always guarantee that in-world pictures don't just happen contain any sensitive elements. There may always be something triggering in them that I'm not aware about. Even if I, as an avatar, avoid looking at the camera (eye contact), there might be another avatar or an NPC or an animesh figure or a static figure somewhere in the background that just happens to look at the camera which I didn't notice in time. Or there may be two avatars dancing, an avatar dancing with an NPC, or a static figure of two people dancing, or a statue of a couple (public display of affection). Or two static figures, one showing a child, one showing an adult woman that's implied to be the child's mother (family). Or maybe, in a picture taken at a very busy and very detailed place, there's a tiny speck that can more or less clearly be identified as a burger or a cake (food) or a bottle of beer (alcohol) or a cat (cats) or an ambulance (health, medicine, work) that was somewhere in the background. Or rather a digital, virtual model of one. I might just discover this myself after posting.

I can't conceal any of this behind a CW for everyone. Within Hubzilla, I can. For people all over Mastodon who make up 99% of my readers, I can't. Again, this is a limitation on Mastodon's side which I have to work around. And the only way I could possibly do so is by not posting any pictures that may offend or trigger someone. I might just as well stop posting images altogether.

Oh, and last but not least: I can't put summaries/CWs on replies.

Unlike Mastodon, Hubzilla has a blog-like, Facebook-like one-post-many-comments thread structure that makes a strict distinction between posts (always only the first) and comments (everything else). And neither Friendica devs nor Hubzilla devs ever thought that a blog comment might grow so long that it'd require a summary. Or that someone would start using summaries for content warnings, especially since Hubzilla has better means for content warnings. So there's no summary functionality for comments.


What it means when I follow you back: Most of the time, it means nothing. It means that I let you follow me. It does not necessarily mean that I actually follow you back.

This is due to a technical limitation on Hubzilla. I've set my channel up in such a way that I have to confirm all new connections. However, when I confirm a new follower connection, I automatically "follow them back", i.e. create a mutual connection. This is hard-coded. I can't change it.

But this does not mean that all your posts actually appear on my stream. If you don't write anything that's within the scope of this channel, I won't allow you to deliver your posts to my stream.

If you write about OpenSim, I will.

If you write about Second Life, I might.

If you write about another virtual world that might be interesting for me, I might.

If you write about the Fediverse, and you don't reduce the Fediverse to only Mastodon, I might.

If you're an in-world acquaintance of mine who doesn't post about OpenSim, I very likely will.

If none of this applies, I won't. I'll let your comments on other posts through, I'll let your direct messages through, but I won't let your posts clutter my stream.

If I let your posts through, but there's a lot of boost spam coming from you that isn't interesting for me, I'll filter your boosts out.

If Hubzilla should ever improve their filters, and I let your posts through, I may still apply a filter that only lets through what I want to read if you post a lot of stuff that I don't find interesting within the scope of this channel.


If you aren't okay with any of this, feel free to block me now before it's too late. I don't care how many people follow me or can read my posts as long as the right ones can. But I will not change the way I post to make it more like Mastodon, especially not if I can't because something is hard-coded.


Thanks for your patience.