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

[benroyce@mastodon.social]

@miclgael @alice @alexadeswift

FUCK YOU!

oh wait sorry

hi michael

(/s)

[su_liam@mas.to]

@alice @altbot My alt texts probably suck, but I got them. Do I yell at people who don’t? No.

[ki@chaos.social]

@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

[odddev@floss.social]

@ki @alice

I suggest to click the link first.

[divverent@social.vivaldi.net]

@alice @altbot And yet, I think this is a problem too. You're one step short from "should you be a dick to anyone who ever boosted a post without alt-text? yes!" style guilt by association.

IMHO not having alt-text should be a factor to consider before boosting a post, but it should not be an outright disqualifier. And if one does feel the need to boost it, that would then be a good chance to bring up https://github.com/micr0-dev/AltBot

[fgbjr@indieweb.social]

@alice @altbot How can you be so reasonable. It makes me most terribly uncomfortable.

[alice@lgbtqia.space]

@mirabilos have you seen AltBot? Its alt-text is better than most folx', it's a tiny (7mb), free, open-source model, paid for by the person hosting it, and it takes less energy than opening your fridge for a few seconds.

I'm all for bashing corporate AI bullshit, but this ain't it.

[ki@chaos.social]

@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

[alice@lgbtqia.space]

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

@OddDev

[odddev@floss.social]

@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.

[ki@chaos.social]

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

[alice@lgbtqia.space]

@divVerent did I ever imply you should be anything other than kind and inclusive to humans?

[deanerschnitzel@chaos.social]

@alice I just occasionally whine at people posting without alt text when my mobile reception is bad and images don’t load.

[alice@lgbtqia.space]

@fgbjr because being unreasonable never made anything better ‍️

[alice@lgbtqia.space]

@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

[fgbjr@indieweb.social]

@alice Two things can be true! /s

[jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu]

@Jourei

At least once have I just not posted something because describing the image in any meaningful way would've been quite a task.
Though nowadays I'll post it anyway, perhaps I should call in helpers in those cases in the future.

I could post lots of pictures that I've made myself, maybe several a week. Instead, I haven't posted any since mid-2024.

I, too, refuse to post any image that doesn't have descriptions (two of them for each one of my original images) which are up to my own constantly rising standards. But these standards mean that even a fairly simple image may require several hours to one or two days to describe and explain.

In fact, I have been working on the descriptions of a series of avatar portraits for about a year and a half. So far, only the common preamble for four images and the individual long description for one of them are written. Distilling an optimal alt-text from them will be difficult because recent discoveries had me lower my personal alt-text character limit from 1,500 to 512, and I haven't even managed to put one together that doesn't exceed 1,500 characters.

And that's for avatar portraits with a neutral white background. Imagine the effort necessary for a landscape or a cityscape or something like that. So much about it being done in 10 seconds.

I recall finding a beautifully built, highly detailed harbour scene. It didn't even have anything in it that'd trigger anyone, I guess, so I deemed it safe enough to post. But I found it outright impossible to properly describe within a reasonable amount of time and with a reasonable effort. I ended up choosing a much different scene that still ended up taking me two full days to describe in the long description plus the morning of the third day to write an alt-text.

To be honest, I avoid having certain elements in my pictures now, such as vehicles and buildings unless they're very simple.

CC: @🅻🅸🅲🅴  ()

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #AltText #AltTextMeta #CWAltTextMeta #ImageDescription #ImageDescriptions #ImageDescriptionMeta #CWImageDescriptionMeta

[ratel@mastodon.social]

@mastodonmigration @alice @altbot "fully realize telling people not to tell people how to use Mastodon is kind of telling people how to use Mastodon". No, it's common sense. No more paradox here than in saying everyone should be free to do as they please. Of course there's more to social life than such minimalistic wisdom but telling people what they should say and how they should say it is clearly no the best way to start a conversation between equals.

[alice@lgbtqia.space]

@fgbjr I'd wager that number is significantly higher

[benroyce@mastodon.social]

@jupiter_rowland

i always alt text but i never write novels

"a skiff on choppy waters with dark clouds in the distance"

it's fine

if you're going to hold yourself to the standard of transmitting the transcendental of an image, i think you're going too hard on yourself

the issue before us is accessibility. that's a fine and noble goal. more lofty goals may be pursued by some, and that's going above and beyond and is laudatory

but it's nothing that can be called a standard of behavior