@Quasit I wouldn't build it on Mastodon. Nor would I build it from scratch and then against Mastodon, only Mastodon and nothing but Mastodon. The Fediverse is not only much more than Mastodon, but technologically much more diverse than just Mastodon.

The best way would be to build it as an add-on (a so-called "app") for (streams) or Forte. That way, you would neither have to deal with Mastodon's limitations (yes, Mastodon is very limited although this isn't apparent to those of its users who don't know anything else), nor would you have to develop Fediverse server software from scratch.

In case you don't know them:

(streams) is the unofficial community name of a very powerful but technically nameless Fediverse application whose code is in the streams repository (https://codeberg.org/streams/streams). It's essentially a Facebook-style social networking application with quite a number of extra features and the second-most recent member of a software family that dates all the way back to Friendica from 2010 (https://friendi.ca). It's a fork of a fork of three forks of a fork (of a fork?) of Hubzilla (https://hubzilla.org) which, in turn, was reworked from a fork of a fork of what's now Friendica.

And Forte (https://codeberg.org/fortified/forte) is a fork of the streams repository that's very similar to (streams) itself.

All this was originally done by one and the same developer, a professional in IT and software for close to half a century.

Here is an article I've put together with tables that compare Mastodon, Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte: https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/item/0a75de76-eb27-4149-b708-f20b2f79d392

Unlike Mastodon which has only got four general-purpose profile fields in addition to the profile text, both (streams) and Forte already come with the profile fields that a good dating app would need such as:

• pronouns (pick one out of 3 or none at all)
• birthday (from which the age is calculated)
• six free-text location fields, even including Facebook-style "hometown" where you used to live; you can select for yourself how far you want to go into detail with revealing your location
• gender (pick one out of 14 or none at all)
• marital status (pick one out of 31 or none at all) plus who plus date since
• sexual preference (pick one out of 9 or none at all)
• a separate keyword field
• political views
• religious views
• hobbies/interests
• likes
• dislikes
• other channels/Fediverse identities
• musical interests
• books/literature
• television
• film/dance/culture/entertainment
• love/romance
• work/employment
• school/education

A dating app could easily tie into the directory and make use of these profile fields. It could use a tag of its own in the keyword field so that it only shows channels that use this app (I'm not sure if it's possible to detect which channel has which apps installed).

One big advantage for users is that they don't have to use their daily-driver channel for the dating app. On Mastodon and in most of the Fediverse, your account is both your login and your identity. On (streams) and Forte, you can have multiple fully independent identities, each with its own name, its own ID, its own profile, its own contacts, its own posts and conversations, its own settings etc. etc., all behind one and the same login. It's like having multiple Mastodon accounts behind one login. That way, users don't have to reveal to everyone who knows their official daily-driver channel that they're using this dating app.

Also, Mastodon is hard-coded to 500 characters. You literally have to soft-fork it and edit the source code to change the limit. Both (streams) and Forte are essentially unlimited in characters (their actual character limit is over 24 million).

Privacy and security are much higher on (streams) and Forte than on Mastodon, in fact, much higher than most Fediverse users can even imagine. Private messages are actually literally private. On Mastodon, a direct message only defines whom it's sent to. On (streams) and Forte, permissions come into play. The start post in a conversation defines who is allowed to see the conversation. Not only that post, but all comments as well. It's literally impossible to pull someone else into an existing private conversation by mentioning because that someone simply isn't allowed to see anything in the conversation.

So when you're chatting with a woman via PM, and she dislikes you, she can't shame or dogpile you by pulling her friends into the conversation.

On top of that, although even Friendica already had quote-posts since 2010, private messages cannot be quote-posted.

For a developer, all it takes to build this is PHP plus database know-how. Like the whole rest of the family, (streams) and Forte don't need anything more than a LAMP stack. No Ruby on Rails, no Elixir, no TypeScript or Vue.js or any other JavaScript, no .NET.

Deploying a (streams) or Forte app is easy, too: Create a public git repository for it, keep it there, and server admins can add your repository to their servers and activate your app server-side. Both (streams) and Forte are very modular and designed to be easy to expand.

Most of this would be possible with Hubzilla as well which is much bigger in terms of users and available servers. However, Hubzilla has got one disadvantage: Its directory only shows Hubzilla and (streams) channels, i.e. channels that use Hubzilla's native Zot protocol. That's because ActivityPub support on Hubzilla is provided by another app, it's optional, it's off by default, and the directory can't tie into it. On (streams), ActivityPub support is still optional, but more advanced than on Hubzilla, built into the core and on by default. And Forte doesn't support anything else than ActivityPub.

In theory, it should be possible to build such a dating app for all three.

Also, yes, in theory, channels that use such a dating app can connect to Mastodon. But Mastodon users couldn't use that dating app. Mastodon simply doesn't have any support for profile fields which it itself doesn't have. Also, Mastodon is too unsecure, and meaningful conversations are difficult if one side is limited to 500 characters. And I would hate to see this dating app bound hard to Mastodon's culture and Mastodon's unwritten rules, neither of which take the Fediverse outside of Mastodon into account.

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@Hazelnoot My goal is to get alt-texts and image descriptions right. As right as possible.

My goal is to not be sanctioned and/or lectured by the alt-text police for allegedly being lazy and/or careless.

In order to achieve that, I must be ahead of everyone's requirements. Whatever these requirements may be.

But in order to achieve that, I must know their requirements. Everyone's requirements.

If you want me to follow your rules, I need to know your rules.

Right now, I'm probably vastly overcompliant with everyone's rules with only a few exceptions that I can't comply with (alt-texts must not be longer than 200 or 125 or 100 characters, posts in the Fediverse must not be longer than 500 characters, all of the text in an image must always be transcribed in the alt-text etc.).

This way, I hope that my image posts will stay in compliance with existing image description quality standards for a few years, and when they no longer are, they're so old that nobody demands I upgrade my image descriptions to then-current standards.

tl;dr: "Just do it" doesn't cut it. Just doing it is likely to get you sanctioned because you don't do it well enough. And something is no longer better than nothing.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #AltTextPolice #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #MastodonCulture

@hosh The alt-text police of the Mastodon Home Owners' Association (Mastodon HOA) have a tendency to be overzealous. And they don't talk to each other. They all act for themselves as lone wolves with exactly no coordination amongst each other whatsoever. You never know what kinds of rules they whip up for themselves.

Chances are that they only let image descriptions count that come directly with the image. If they acknowledge an image description outside the alt-text, it must be in the post itself. Not as an external link, but the description text itself.

Besides, at least some in the Mastodon HOA have problems with external links. And I don't just mean that they don't trust embedded links whose URL they can't see in plain sight, the kind that Hubzilla can create and Mastodon can't (not that Hubzilla couldn't fake a plain-sight link by embedding a different URL than the visible).

I don't mean either that probably a majority of Mastodon users don't even recognise embedded links without a visible URL as such because they don't know that such a thing can exist in the Fediverse, because Mastodon can't make them.

No, what I mean is the notion that external links for explanations are inherently bad from an accessibility point of view. "Mastodon" (as in how Mastodon users experience the Fediverse, i.e. the Mastodon Web UI or any of the popular mobile phone apps) is sufficiently accessible. But the Web outside of "Mastodon" (same definition again) may not be accessible enough.

A few years ago, I've literally read a Mastodon toot in which someone said that explanations must not be linked to. Linked websites have a risk of not being accessible. Explanations must always be directly in the same post. Apparently, they thought that everything and anything can be explained and broken down until everyone understands it within 500 characters.

This is also why Mastodon users tend to explain their images in the alt-text. It's only there where they have at least halfway enough characters for an explanation, 1,500 per image as opposed to usually only 500 in the post text. (On Mastodon, much unlike Hubzilla, the alt-text is a separate database field that exists separately for each of the up to four images per message.)

That is, explanations must never go into the alt-text because there are people who cannot open alt-texts to read them. But nobody on Mastodon knows that.

It should be obvious that what counts for explanations counts for visual descriptions just as well.

And in fact, regarding Hubzilla articles, they're actually right. I've once pointed an actually blind screen reader user to an article on my Hubzilla channel. She said she couldn't even navigate the Web interface. She literally couldn't get to the text body of the article to have it read out by her screen reader.

Hubzilla's Web interface, no matter which app is opened, is not accessible. It does not work with screen readers. It's largely still stuck in 2012 when nobdy made any ruckus about the accessibility of hobbyist Web projects.

The only reason why at least some blind or visually-impaired users can read our Hubzilla posts and comments and DMs is because they're all on Mastodon, and they read our content either on Mastodon's Web UI or a Mastodon app that supports screen readers. But they do not read our content at the source. Because they can't.

I actually took into consideration linking to my long image descriptions. But my idea was not to link to a Hubzilla article, nor to a Hubzilla wiki or a Hubzilla card. No, my idea was to write a plain HTML document, upload it to my file space and link to that.

I've dropped that idea for various reasons:

• Generally, still, external links are frowned upon.
• I don't know if plain HTML is accessible without a CSS. And I can't add a CSS to this HTML if the HTML document is not served to the recipient by a Web server, but by a file server.
• I don't know how Google Chrome on Android or Safari on an iPhone will react when they access an HTML document on a file space. Will they display it as a website? Or will they download it onto the device as a file without opening it because, again, it is served to them not by a Web server, but by a file server?
• Mobile users dislike opening websites from apps because they dislike their browser popping open. And on Mastodon, much unlike Hubzilla, almost everyone is on a phone and a dedicated app almost all the time.
• This also means that mobile users would have the image and the description in two separate apps. The image in their Mastodon app, the description in their browser.
• I would need much more description.
  Right now, when I have multiple images, my long descriptions consist of a preamble that contains all necessary explanations and, if applicable, visual descriptions of elements that are common to all images. The individual descriptions for each image follow.
  But if I had one image description file per image, then each image description would need the whole preamble included. I can't just add the preamble to the first description file.
  What if someone opens the third description file first? They'll only have a very incomplete description. And linking to the first description file is inconvenient. I would have to know the URL of the first file before completing and uploading the other files because I'd have to include the URL of the first file in them. And the users would have to have three documents open (the image post, the description of the image they're interested in, the description of the first image with the preamble) just to experience one image. Spread across two phone apps.

And that's why I can't put my additional long description in an external document.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #AltTextPolice #MastodonHOA #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #MastodonCulture

@C. I have two major issues with the Mastodon HOA.

One, they try hard to force "Mastodon standards", Mastodon culture and Mastodon's unwritten rules upon the whole Fediverse. Including places that not only aren't Mastodon, but that are very much not Mastodon. Simply because they can't see where a message is from. In fact, many of them are still fully convinced that the Fediverse is only Mastodon.

And so you have members of the Mastodon HOA yelling at someone who is allegedly "doing Mastodon wrong", but that someone is actually on Friendica and has been since as early as 2011. As in about five years longer than Mastodon has even existed. And seriously, the only places in the Fediverse that are even more different and farther away from Mastodon than Friendica (without specialising in something that Mastodon absolutely can't do) are Friendica's own descendants: Hubzilla, (streams), Forte.

The Mastodon HOA probably don't know that Friendica exists. They definitely don't know that either of the other three exists. They definitely don't know that any of the four is significantly different from Mastodon in any way. And frankly, they don't care a bit. If it appears on any Mastodon timeline, it's Mastodon to them, and it has to adapt to Mastodon's culture and follow Mastodon's rules.

Two, they don't coordinate anything among each other. They're just a bunch of lone wolves. Everyone has got their own standards, but everyone thinks their personal standards are the one and only Mastodon/Fediverse gold standards, and everyone enforces their own standards. And, of course, everyone thinks their standards can and must apply always, including in the most obscure edge-cases.

For example, they've got standards for describing real-life photos on Mastodon with a character limit of 500. And they try to enforce these standards always and everywhere. However, these standards don't necessarily work perfectly when I post a rendering from a super-obscure 3-D virtual world on (streams) with a character limit of over 24 million where I've got loads of room to write an additional long image description and put it into the post text.

The Mastodon HOA, or at least some of their members, appear to be constantly raising their minimum quality requirements for image descriptions. They must be absolutely accurate, and they must be sufficiently detailed that nobody will ever have to ask for a detail description. Oh, and they must explain whatever the audience may not know about the image or the description. (At this point, it's fair to mention that explanations must never go into the alt-text.)

Sure, I can do that. I have done so in the past. But I can't do that within Mastodon's alt-text character limit of 1,500 (Mastodon truncates longer alt-texts from outside). I can do that even less within Misskey's alt-text character limit of only 512 (Misskey and the Forkeys should truncate longer alt-texts, but due to a bug, they delete them entirely instead, giving the impression that you haven't written an alt-text at all). I can only do that in the additional long description in the post text.

If the Mastodon HOA demand I transcribe literally any and all text within the borders of an image, I can do that, too. In fact, I have done so in the past. I can transcribe bits of text verbatim which the Mastodon HOA can't even read. Which the Mastodon HOA couldn't even find in the image because they're so tiny. But there's no way that I can squeeze 20+ individual text transcripts into 1,500 characters of alt-text along with the rest of the visual description, much less into only 512 characters. The text transcripts will have to go into the long description in the post text, whether the Mastodon HOA want or not.

This means that the post will exceed the holy limit of 500 characters by huge magnitudes. This, in turn, means that when I've satisfied one Mastodon HOA member, another one comes and sanctions me for exceeding the holy 500-character limit. That is, chances are it's actually the same Mastodon HOA member.

In other words, if the content of an image is obscure enough and requires enough description, the only winning move when I want to post such an image is to not post it at all.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #500Characters #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta #MastodonCulture #MastodonHOA

@Justin Crozer @Stefan Bohacek @Lentävä Kalakukko @Roni Rolle Laukkarinen Whenever I see Mastodon users talk about "culture" in a Fediverse context, I have to wonder: What exactly do they refer to when they talk about "culture"?

Is it Fediverse culture? As in, overarching, software-independent Fediverse culture?

As in, taking into consideration that Fediverse server applications that aren't Mastodon, e.g. Misskey or Sharkey or Friendica or Hubzilla, have different cultures than Mastodon?

Recognising a post or a comment from one of these applications, acknowledging that it comes from a place with a different history, a different set of features and thus a different culture than Mastodon and refraining from enforcing Mastodon's unwritten rules against it?

Or does "culture" only refer to Mastodon's culture? Does it reject or completely disregard all cultures in the Fediverse that aren't Mastodon's and demand the whole Fediverse adopt Mastodon's culture and only Mastodon's culture?

Do these "bad eggs" include users who post more than 500 characters at once (which, by the way, is perfectly normal everywhere outside of Mastodon)?

Do these "bad eggs" include users who reply to people who haven't mentioned them first, and whom they aren't mutually following either (which, by the way, is perfectly normal in large parts of the non-Mastodon Fediverse, too)?

Do these "bad eggs" include users who quote-post Mastodon toots that must not be quote-posted (because they've had quote-posts for much longer than Mastodon, but without a no-quote flag so they can't see Mastodon's no-quote flag)?

Do these "bad eggs" incllude users who "misuse" Mastodon's CW field for summaries (because they have literally had the exact same text field as a summary field for seven years longer than Mastodon has had it as a CW field, and because having a summary field makes a whole lot of sense if your character limit is not 500, but over 16.7 million)?

Do these "bad eggs" include users who use more than four hashtags in one post (because, unlike Mastodon, the places where they are have filtering as well as automatically having messages hidden behind CW buttons deeply engrained into their cultures, but this requires the appropriate keywords to be present)?

If so, then this explains why only Mastodon users can enjoy significant reach on Mastodon: Everyone else is mass-blocked for misbehaving by Mastodon's standards.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #QuotePost #QuotePosts #QuoteTweet #QuoteTweets #QuoteToot #QuoteToots #QuoteBoost #QuoteBoosts #QuotedShares #QuotePostDebate #QuoteTootDebate #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #CharacterLimit #CharacterLimits #CharacterLimitMeta #CWCharacterLimitMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #MastodonCulture #MastodonCentricity #MastodonNormativity

Your own posts aren't any better anyway; CW: long (over 1,300 characters), Fediverse meta, Fediverse-beyond-Mastodon meta, alt-text meta, image description meta, character limit meta, hashtag meta View article View summary

@David Mitchell :CApride: On the other hand, when I look at your personal timeline, it's obvious that you've never really arrived on Mastodon. You break all kinds of rules. You break alt-text and image-describing rules, and you break Mastodon's cultural rules.

You write alt-texts in multiple paragraphs. You almost never use CWs, not for posts over 500 characters, not for US or Canadian politics, not for wars, never. You rarely use hashtags, and when you do, you sometimes put them in-line instead of all into the bottom line. In-line hashtags are inconvenient for screen reader users.

You boost image posts without checking whether the images have alt-texts, much less whether the alt-texts are accurate, sufficiently detailed and in line with the existing alt-text and image description rules. You boost posts about potentially disturbing topics that have no CWs.

So don't come lecturing me if your own doings are likely to get you silently muted and blocked by other Mastodon users left and right.

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@Stefan Bohacek And I agree, of course. I think policing overall should be left to moderators. Especially enforcing unwritten rules and expectations across different communities.
This is the very reason why the Fediverse becomes a minefield for all non-Mastodon users the very moment they establish their first out-going connection to Mastodon.

Mods are or should be more considerate and more well-read about the Fediverse. They (should) know better than to police users from other servers with different rules the same as they enforce their own rules locally.

They (should) also know that not only the Fediverse is more than Mastodon, but that the non-Mastodon Fediverse has different cultures and does not necessarily share Mastodon's unwritten rules. And ideally, they should be able to at least have a rough idea about which "toots" do not come from Mastodon itself.

A mod should know better than to attack and sanction someone who has just posted over 5,000 characters at once with text formatting, headlines, a bullet-point list and weird-looking mentions and hashtags for not complying with Mastodon's culture and Mastodon's unwritten rules because that someone clearly is on something that's very much not Mastodon.

Non-mods don't care. They attack whomever they feel disturbing. And as for the above poster, they want that kind gone from the Fediverse altogether.

Especially Mastodon servers really ought to introduce rules against excessive policing by non-mods.

This has created a very toxic and gatekeepy atmosphere that's causing a lack of diversity on here.
And yet, it's usually the non-Mastodon users who are being accused of gatekeeping and being toxic. If they're identified (or, more often, openly identify themselves) as non-Mastodon users, that is.

CC: @Leon Cowle

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