We're a few days into the current wave of #TwitterMigration, and we're all excited for all the #NewHere folks to have joined.

But please be mindful you are joining a social network that was not a barren, desolate desert before. It was a blooming, cozy garden.

It's not just about finding your old connections from  , it's also about making new valuable connections with folks on here, who might have moved years ago, or who might have never had an account on hellbird.

It's also important to recognize that like any large change to a social space, and like other such migrations before, this is making many of us old-timers here somewhat anxious.

Plenty of fedi people had quit  to find respite from the toxicity. So, a social contract of sorts emerged here.

It includes things that might be unfamiliar to the new arrivals — like broad use of Content Warnings ("CW" under the edit box) and expectation that images have alt text for the visually impaired.

@rysiek @djnavarro what does alt text mean? how do you do it?
@jayatid @rysiek alt text is the verbal description of an image that you can add to make it accessible to screen readers, for folks who can’t see the image. If it’s at all helpful, I included a quick description of how to add alt text on mastodon in this post: https://blog.djnavarro.net/posts/2022-11-03_what-i-know-about-mastodon/#etiquette-on-alt-text