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Why in-depth image descriptions are not as helpful as you might think 

Imagine you're using an online shop. What you'll typically see is a list of products where each list item has a small preview image, a product name and some other metadata.
Now imagine that the shop displays a long textual description for each product instead. This is what the timeline appears like to screen reader users if long image descriptions are used. And unlike people seeing the text, they don't have the luxury of skimming to grasp vital information quickly -- they have to wait for the screen reader to read it all.

In-depth descriptions are only helpful when the user has decided the content is interesting to them. Currently, most fedi frontends put them in the attachment's alt attribute, which is fine if the user is currently viewing a single post instead of the timeline. But on the timeline, it's much more important to have quick summaries instead.
In terms of the example above, it's the same difference as when viewing a single product vs. the product list. You're only interested in the details if a product is interesting to you.

Image description on fedi are a step up from having none at all, but they're still inadequate. Ideally, you could provide both a quick summary and an in-depth description, and the UI presents both in a way that's the most helpful.
Since this possibility doesn't exist, please consider keeping image descriptions short and putting the long description in the post body.

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I thought about it and probably if it wasn't for Mastodon's dumb exclusive advertising I would've joined the Fediverse earlier.
Like many others my first contact with the existence of the Fediverse was Mastodon. I only knew Mastodon existed, Mastodon is the main #1 thing. I kind of saw the term Fediverse around and its wikipedia page but my brain kind of ignored the possibility of joining an instance running something different, since I had the impression Mastodon is the only one worth(?I think?).
Either way Mastodon was never appealing to me, I wasn't a fan of it, so I didn't join. (if curious, this is partly because Mastodon seemed to try to be heavily inspired by the experience/atmosphere of Twitter, while somehow seeming duller than it, which I didn't appreciate too much).

If right from the beginning I was introduced to this as the Fediverse being this general network which offers me multiple flavours of server software I can try, each being well advertised and showcased too AND it was clear it didn't matter which I joined, there would be more chances I would've joined earlier, when I first heard about all of this.

This interconnection and variety of choice is fun and appealing! It is a cool novelty into itself and its full potential should be shown off, instead of mentally locking new users into Mastodon. Or at least this is what I think and what I would value myself.

and, well, for the record, the first time I joined fedi was the time I learned about Pleroma and the fact I don't miss anything if I join it vs joining a Masto instance.

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@captainepoch
You did a great job as a maintainer, sad to see it turn out like this. I wish your experience could have been better, and now we can learn from it.

If I knew anything about Android development, or I had the time to learn, I'd jump at the role of maintainer. Guess it's meant for someone else as of now.

To anyone: If I can be of service in any way, please lmk. I wish the best for Husky.

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@torresjrjr datetime::in(&chrono::tz("Europe/Moscow")!, dt)

@yyp
datetime::in(&chrono::tz("Europe/London")!, dt)

@miklo
Hundreds of projects, a dozen of them are useful.

Thousands of instancea/servers running those projects.

Millions of users. Last time I checked it was 4.5 million. I've heard its now 7 million.

The slow and steady growth is great.

I wish description lists <dl> were common in most dialects of Markdown. Like PHP's colon syntax, or even the tilde one.

```
The
: quick
: brown
: fox
jumps
: over
: the
: lazy
: dog
```

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@hare
Hare standard library HTML documentation produced by haredoc:
docs.harelang.org/

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I kinda hate that the common connotation of meme is me funny internet image and not a "living" idea as it used to be

@lain
Wiktionary tells me that "culturgen" is a suitable synonym for the original sense of "meme".

> One of the propagating mutating cultural units that form the subject of memetics.

cool.

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Never been really a fan of all the new post C languages but the fact that #hare aims to target #plan9 makes it very appealing for me to jump in and give it a try.

@FediFollows
Would you mention these two?
- @hare@fosstodon.org
- @hare

Really love what you're doing with this channel, btw :). The ~best on the fedi.

@fatboy
In theory, Matrix is a supperior successor to XMPP. In practice, the Matrix ecosystem is terribly bloated.

IIRC, the flagship server is written in Python, and the flagship client "Element" is a terribly slugish webapp. Even some of the Android apps need some serious UX overhauls.

Turns out that the default config for certain servers is too generous towards the central Matrix servers.

And most of all, Matrix grew suspiciously too quickly in numbers and funding. With Amdoc, the Israeli cyber-intelligence company, as the backing of a lot of this, Matrix just smells. Just like Signal, and anything else that amassed it's appeal via funding.

These takes are not thought out. Just speaking my mind.

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