Mastodawn

I don't know who needs to hear this, but if you're yelling at a person on Fedi for not using #AltText, stop. Please.

Should you use alt-text? Yes!

Should you boost posts without alt-text? No!

Should you yell at companies and bots who don't use alt-text? Fuck yeah!

Should you try your best to make Fedi a more accessible, and safe place for everyone—including those who have trouble writing alt-text? Of course.

Should you mention @altbot or #Alt4Me *occasionally* so folx know they're both wonderful tools that can help make Fedi a more inclusive place? It would be impolite not to.

But—and let me make this clear—don't be a dick to folx who forget alt-text, or who have trouble writing it for whatever reason; it's not very punk of you.

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Kai Klostermann

@alice @altbot May I offer you a feature request in these trying times?
https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/26464

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🅰🅻🅸🅲🅴 (🌈🦄)5h ago

@OddDev I like the feature suggestion, but I'd suggest a few restrictions on alt-text submissions so trolls don't use it as an invisible way to spam users with horrible messages.

1. Image must be missing alt-text to get proposal
2. Only one proposal per account
3. No proposals from accounts/servers you have blocked or limited.

@altbot

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normy foxyoreos 3h ago

@alice @OddDev @altbot I've wanted this for a while, and I think it would be a big help on the Fediverse.<3

I compare this to tag suggestions on the NSFW galleries I post to. Good galleries allow users to suggest tags without commenting, that increases the number of suggestions and leads to better tagging and filtering.

Some implementations I've seen:

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normy foxyoreos 3h ago

@alice @OddDev @altbot - users can disable tag suggestions (I'd like this for alt text suggestions, it's a really effective safety valve against harassment)

- mods can also accept tags, which greatly increases the speed without opening up to much abuse. The fediverse equivalent would be something like "your own instance operator can accept alt text for you." I am neutral on this, there are some instances I think it would be great, others where maybe they're too large and it becomes dangerous.

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normy foxyoreos 2h ago

@alice @OddDev @altbot
- blocks apply to suggestions (you already mentioned that, but yeah)

- the only thing I'd question is, the one per account? I'm not saying it's wrong, I see the benefit, but with tagging, very often I'd find community members who would literally sit down and go through an artists gallery and meticulously tag in one sitting and you ended up with like.. expert taggers in the community that just did this. And it's really really good with that happens.

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normy foxyoreos 2h ago

@alice @OddDev @altbot BUT.. I also see the potential for abuse, yeah. It would need to be paired with like.. the ability to mass reject all proposals from a user, maybe limitations between instances or a user setting to force it to be one per account? idk.

I'd absolutely love to see something like this come to Mastodon though. It makes alt text more of a community thing <3

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jan Ki | 奇

5h ago

@OddDev @alice
please don't auto-generate alt-text, just write it by hand. auto-generation is flawed and misses context. oftentimes having a sloppy auto-generated alt-text is worse than having none at all

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Kai Klostermann 5h ago

@ki @alice

I suggest to click the link first. 😅🙃

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jan Ki | 奇

5h ago

@OddDev @alice
I did, but judging by your reply, I've probably misunderstood it? I was thinking about the composition UI and an LLM anti-feature in the context of altbot

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Kai Klostermann 5h ago

@ki @alice It is for other humans to provide alt text.

> People choose to either scold the author in the replies or add a image descriptions as an answer.
It would make this process much easier to have a dedicated feature for that.

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🅰🅻🅸🅲🅴 (🌈🦄)5h ago

@ki also, that's what proofreading is for.

@alice @OddDev
I don't trust people who don't write their own alt-text to proofread it :/

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🅰🅻🅸🅲🅴 (🌈🦄)5h ago

@ki I've never seen altbot get something so wrong that it would be worse than not having alt-text. In fact, altbot consistently writes better alt-text than like 90% of folx on Fedi.

I hate corporate AI bullshit, but altbot isn't that.

@OddDev