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2024-08-12 11:49:55

talksina@mastodon.uno

Someone thinks that #AltText can be a way to expand Mastodon's 500 characters limit. WTF, for me #blind user this statement is like someone saying that bathrooms for people with #disability are useful to have sex in them, because they're spacious and mostly free. And after all this, someone still says I am the one aggressive and who bothers other people. Me.

show all 24 comments

2024-08-12 11:53:45

deilann v -0.2.1. :neodog_hyper: :neodog_nom_verified:

deilann@tech.lgbt

@talksina

and much like you could get a room instead of occupying the needed stall folks expect to be used as a bathroom

one could also just move to an instance with a higher character limit

2024-08-12 11:57:51

Biggles

Taco_lad@aus.social

@talksina what? W T F?
This Someone fails to understand mastodon. My character limit is 3k. With 1.5k for alt text.

2024-08-12 12:08:02

Doggie :neofox_snug: :therian:

lunareclipse@snug.moe

@talksina yeah, like, expanding the character limit in mastodon could be done like literally every other fedi software does it... by just expanding the character limit.

vanilla mastodon is somehow the only software that doesn't allow admins to adjust the character limit.

I'm on iceshrimp and the current limit on my instance is 3000 characters. It used to be 8192 at some point before.

2024-08-12 12:10:19

Elena Brescacin

talksina@mastodon.uno

@lunareclipse I don't think it's needed to expand character limits on Mastodon as Fediverse has many spaces which are interoperable. And nothing prevents us from having multiple accounts according to what we need. We can even stay readonly on one, write in the other, mention users from other platforms...

2024-08-12 13:06:28

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Lunawawa :neofox_snug: :therian:

vanilla mastodon is somehow the only software that doesn't allow admins to adjust the character limit.

They can adjust the character limit. But it requires digging into the source code because the limit is hard-coded. Basically, if you as an admin want a higher character limit, you have to soft-fork Mastodon.

And whenever you upgrade your instance to a new version, it's force-rebased to vanilla, and you have to soft-fork it and apply your changes again.

Better yet: Changing the character limit by modifying the source code is, technically speaking, illegal. It would only be compliant with the GNU Affero General Public License if the admin uploaded the modified code to GitHub as a fork of vanilla Mastodon. But no Mastodon admin even only goes through the hassle of learning git just to have more characters.

CC: @Elena Brescacin

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AGPL #Mastodon #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #500Characters

2024-08-12 13:09:27

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Elena Brescacin

I don't think it's needed to expand character limits on Mastodon as Fediverse has many spaces which are interoperable.

Try telling that to the millions of Mastodon users who are still fully convinced that Mastodon is the Fediverse, and the Fediverse is only Mastodon. Especially those who don't want it any other way, and who'll be shocked out of their minds to learn it isn't the case.

CC: @Lunawawa :neofox_snug: :therian:

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse

2024-08-12 13:09:36

Doggie :neofox_snug: :therian:

lunareclipse@snug.moe

@jupiter_rowland I don't count modifying the software as "you can adjust it" tbh.

They could just do whatever glitch-soc does to make it properly configurable if gargron wasn't stuck up about this for some reason.

2024-08-12 13:13:46

Doggie :neofox_snug: :therian:

lunareclipse@snug.moe

@jupiter_rowland as a sidenote, your instance is doing mentions and hashtags in a way that doesn't properly federate here...

None of the mentions are detected as mentions by iceshrimp, and the tags all link to #[tag] instead of #tag

2024-08-12 13:16:57

drawnto

drawnto@woof.group

@talksina

Answered by others.

I fail to see any reason for strong opinions on this abuse of the platform.

Alt-text is necessary for people to have a better chance to understand a toot whether or how the content of the img is relevant to the message.

If the alt-text starts with "Just a white image. Continuing the toot: ", what are blind people losing here?

Do screen readers struggle with this in a way i fail to appreciate?

Yes there are.

2024-08-12 13:17:37

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Lunawawa :neofox_snug: :therian:

They could just do whatever glitch-soc does to make it properly configurable if gargron wasn't stuck up about this for some reason.

If they knew Glitch.

But my estimation is that every other Mastodon user only knows vanilla Mastodon and thinks the whole Fediverse is only that. It doesn't help that Glitch instances identify as Mastodon instances.

#FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse

2024-08-12 13:24:36

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Lunawawa :neofox_snug: :therian: Not only my instance. All of Hubzilla always does it. So did and do all of Hubzilla's ancestors, all the way back to Mistpark from 2010 from which Friendica eventually emerged. And so did and do all of Hubzilla's descendants, including the streams repository and recently newborn Forte.

The issue is not on my side. If anything, the issue is on the side of Misskey and the Forkeys, all of whose devs seem to be blissfully unaware of Mike Macgirvin's creations of over 14 years and how they work. Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams) seem to rarely get into touch with Misskey and the Forkeys.

Basically, someone will have to go around and file issues with bugs on the repositories of Misskey and all its hard forks, one by one, informing the devs that not all of the Fediverse is micro-blogging, that not all of the Fediverse apes Twitter, and that there are places in the Fediverse from before Mastodon that have always done hashtags and mentions differently from Twitter.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Misskey #Forkey #Forkeys #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Hashtag #Hashtags #HashtagMeta #CWHashtagMeta

2024-08-12 14:33:07

flere-imsaho 🇺🇦

mawhrin@circumstances.run

@talksina oh for fuck's sake. actually both limits should be easily tweakable. (i've upped the message limit on my instance to 5K, i wonder upping the limit of the alt text is just as easy, or if it requires deeper changes.)

2024-08-12 14:46:17

tyil

tyil@fedi.tyil.nl

@talksina@mastodon.uno To be fair, bathrooms for the disabled are useful to have sex in due to their spacious nature. Using alt text for extra typing room is just silly though, you can run literally any other fedi software and get larger (and usually easily adjustable) character limits.

2024-08-12 15:42:33

kel

kel@mastodon.online

@talksina

I admit I tried this* once or twice, but it really didn't feel good!

Too many people are incapable of acknowledging that they messed up, made a mistake, got it wrong, changing their viewpoint, there are words that describe them, I don't think they need repeating here, but the point is, try not to let these people get to you.

Saying 'no', is not aggression. Ever.

*the AltText thing, not the sex in the toilet thing (just to be clear)

2024-08-12 16:03:59

boiert

boiert@mastodon.xyz

@talksina But.. they are. And sometimes urgency beats priority..

2024-08-12 16:10:46

Inga stands with 🇺🇦 🇵🇸

IngaLovinde@embracing.space

@lunareclipse @jupiter_rowland yeah there are plenty of existing soft forks of mastodon, they are perfectly upgradeable on their own without admins having to rebase anything, and I think all of them (or at least all popular ones) have the character limit configurable in the same config file where everything else is configured.

2024-08-12 18:58:48

Amber

puppygirlhornypost@transfem.social

@talksina@mastodon.uno there’s literally like 2 lines you can change to expand the text limit what the actual fuck lmao why are these people just not migrating to instances with higher character limits

2024-08-12 19:08:37

not_leader

not_leader@is.ahavah.gay

@jupiter_rowland in this case it's probably easier to use a fork like glitch-soc or chuckya

2024-08-12 20:11:55

washing-socks-is-my-passion

gabrilend@tech.lgbt

@talksina

I do this. I'm sorry. I try to avoid it, but sometimes I'm like 40 characters above the limit and I can't find a way to edit my poem down so I just screenshot the bottom part and continue the text in the alt-text.

Please let me know if I can do anything better. Like should I add a notice at the start of the alt-text like "this is a continuation of the post in screenshot form. There are negative 40 characters remaining. Here is the text: blah blah blah" or should I just continue the text without an explanation?

2024-08-13 15:27:50

D.Hamlin.Music

dhamlinmusic@dragonscave.space

@lunareclipse @jupiter_rowland Over here I get menTions that seem to work but the hashtags are just treated as plain text and nonfunctional.

2024-08-13 21:50:02

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@D.Hamlin.Music @Lunawawa :neofox_snug: :therian: The problem is most likely that Mistpark, now Friendica, introduced hashtags that do not include the "hashtag character" into the link. All of Friendica's descendants took this behaviour over, including Hubzilla and (streams).

#Hashtag

Twitter/? has always included the "hashtag character" into the link. All the Twitter replacements, Mastodon, Pleroma, Misskey and their forks, have taken this behaviour over.

#Hashtag

However, they largely expect or used to expect everything in the Fediverse to do that. The way Friendica and its descendants do hashtags is unexpected and highly irritating to them. Vanilla Mastodon has largely fixed their hashtag handling; only the extraction of the hashtags in the last line doesn't work properly yet.

Apparently, this fix was introduced to vanilla Mastodon after the Glitch fork, and Glitch has never taken it over. And the Iceshrimp.NET devs seem not to know about this phenomenon either.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Hashtag #Hashtags #HashtagMeta #CWHashtagMeta #Glitch #GlitchSoc #Glitch_Soc #Iceshrimp #Iceshrimp.NET #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams)

2024-08-13 22:00:38

D.Hamlin.Music

dhamlinmusic@dragonscave.space

@jupiter_rowland Every one of your hashtags here are broken fyi.

2024-08-13 23:03:28

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@D.Hamlin.Music Okay, let me demonstrate it this way. I hope Glitch can at least display multiple-line code blocks. If not, I give up, for there's absolutely no way of showing you what I mean.

On Twitter, Mastodon and everything else that "does microblogging", a hashtag includes the hashtag character in the link. In #[zrl=https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/search?tag=Hashtag]Hashtag[/zrl], everything is part of the link and part of the hashtag.

All this is a link
    |
________
#[zrl=https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/search?tag=Hashtag]Hashtag[/zrl]

Look at the hashtags that you're used to. The # is always part of the link and part of the hashtag.

This is what Mastodon used to expect. And this is what Glitch (which is where you are) and Iceshrimp.NET (which is where @Lunawawa :neofox_snug: :therian: is) still expect and nothing else.

Friendica, Hubzilla (which is where I am) and (streams) work differently, also because Friendica is five and a half years older than Mastodon, Hubzilla is an indirect Friendica fork, and (streams) is an indirect Mastodon fork.

In #[zrl=https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/search?tag=Hashtag]Hashtag[/zrl], the # is decoration, not part of the link, not part of the hashtag. Only Hashtag is the link and the actual hashtag.

Neither Glitch nor Iceshrimp.NET can handle this. Their devs have probably never seen any of this. They neither know it exists, nor do they even only expect it to exist.

Result: Glitch "sanitises" the unknown, unexpected, "IDFK what this is" code away, just like Mastodon probably used to do until someone from Friendica or Hubzilla filed a bug on GitHub. And Iceshrimp.NET doesn't know how to handle this unexpected code at all. It fails ungracefully by going completely haywire.

I'm going to file a bug on the Glitch repository now. For Iceshrimp.NET, I'll need an account on its repository.

The following hashtags are only for discovery purposes and for sensible users to filter this comment out.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Glitch #GlitchSoc #Glitch_Soc #Iceshrimp #Iceshrimp.NET #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Hashtag #Hashtags #HashtagMeta #CWHashtagMeta

2024-08-13 23:08:26

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@D.Hamlin.Music Okay, due to a bug in Hubzilla which causes it to insist in parsing hashtags as such even in code blocks, even with zero-width characters in them, I cannot demonstrate what I mean.

#FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Hubzilla