FailForward @FailForward@social.cleverlibre.org

# SON OF A WITCH | DARK SWAMP BLUES on the Dobro Duolian Resonator Guitar

https://youtu.be/J46sRuj99Cw

#music #fediradio

@hellquist

I start to think about Fediverse not as platforms (Mastodon, Friendica, etc.), but rather in terms of instances. Many instances are heavily customised. Me joining qoto.org gives me a completely different experience than you joining friendica, or mastodon.online, or whatever else. In effect, my experience with rich text formatting, etc. at qoto.org is somewhat similar to what you'd get on friendica plain. But with those fast timelines... I imagine other platforms (like Pleroma, or glitch-soc) are modified towards other mixture and weighing of the same ingredients in a slightly different outcome.

So maybe the solution for your friends is this:
- let them join an instance which you recommend (if you have any power over that) to make sure than among your group you will share good experience and tech features.
- of course outside that single platform it's not going to be great, but those are those other people.
- so there will be some frustration, but most of it will be kept outside your circle of friends/family.

Something like that...

@ercanbrack

@hellquist

In other words, what we have here is a classic FOSS issue: backend architecture and protocols - great. Front-end: semi-fail. Like taking it to 85% of the job, where the remaining 15% are so obvious that it sends casual end-users crying, while techies like most of us just shrug, accept the damage and move on.

@ercanbrack

@hellquist

Well, it's clear what is going on. The post is federated in its raw HTML form. The mess of the display which happens then is clearly screw-ups of the individual front-ends which themselves chose to either strip or not the HTML tags before sending it to the browser. Also, some clients/front-ends obviously "overdo" in that they add a thumbnail card, or additional profile picture, or the attached image. This makes sense when you expect that east status/post will be plaintext. If it's not, you either should not touch it, or completely strip it.

My conclusion from this is that I absolutely cannot rely on how my posts will be rendered to others. Sometimes also essential information is stripped, e.g., links included via `a` tag or images included via `img` tag - very bad.

To be on the safe side - if you want a post to be widely shared, it should stick to the original Mastodon plaintext format.

@ercanbrack

@hellquist

This version is quite acceptable.

@ercanbrack

@hellquist

While we are at this, maybe you can show me how were the different renderings of the boosted friendica post you sent yesterday about northern England. Here's how I experience it at QOTO. I also saw how it looks natively at Friendica (basically the same). Could you perhaps upload a screenshot how it looks like at usual Mastodon instances (or Pleroma)?

@ercanbrack

@ercanbrack

I just realised it strips even the `img` tag. That sucks. So the only reliable way to include images is to upload them as attachments. But that is stupid, as often they would be from 3rd party websites... Well, I am misusing Mastodon here at qoto obviously...

@hellquist

@ercanbrack

And here's what you see in FediLab (I uninstalled Tusky already)

@hellquist

@ercanbrack

Here's a comparison of what you experience and what I experience on Mastodon. Very different...

@hellquist

@ercanbrack

🙂 Try to use Mastodon web interface and click either on my profile, or click on the timestamp of this toot (top right corner - it's the toot age).

# What you will see

## Will probably surprise you

1. but **maybe** not _too much_
2. still can be an ~~interesting~~ experience

Either way, you'll see different stuff than you are used to.

| a | b | c | d | e |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| xxx | | **uuu** | | |
| | rr | | | |

and maybe even something else

<img src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c0/Raster_graphic_fish_40X46squares_hdtv-example.png/675px-Raster_graphic_fish_40X46squares_hdtv-example.png" width="100%"/>

Like it?

If you look at this via some app, most likely **half** is plain _text_ and the rest is scrambled.

@hellquist

@hellquist

I explored the HTML stripping and rendering issue and concluded that it's completely out of control of the original poster. There are at least 3 places where rendering changes can happen:

1. your home instance when you post can strip rich text formatting (it certainly does convert markdown or whatever you use to html which is the raw ActivityPub transport, c.f., https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues/11115)
2. when the status/post is federated, the receiving instance can strip any rich formatting
3. even when the formatting survives all that, the end-user client can choose to render or strip: Web ap vs. FediLab vs. Tusky.

In between these 3 there's plenty what can go wrong. For me, the lesson learned is that when communicating to others, go as plain as possible - make no assumptions on client rendering (e.g., no embedded links). When just noting for self to display on your timeline/wall, do whatever you like.

For comparison how just different Mastodon instances (not speaking of completely different platforms) display the same toot:
- https://qoto.org/@FailForward/105645352449165283
- https://mstdn.social/@calculsoberic?max_id=105646478895847045 <-- search for the same boosted toot in the timeline

BTW, a trick to discover how a toot would look at a different instance, look for boosts or responses from that instance and then browse the display at their timeline.

@ercanbrack

@hellquist

re friendica & markdown: I looked into it and apparently there is an addon for friendica enabling Markdown, so if you self-host, that would be an option. For public services it seems the only way to find out is to create an account.

@ercanbrack

@academicalnerd
Thanks for the reference. Already looked into transactional analysis a bit, I find the terminology and the graphical schematic language useful. Indeed, I would like to learn more about these things.

@freemo @users Thanks a lot for your response, I really appreciate. Am learning all the time...

As for merveilles.town, I read about qoto.org suspended from the side of merveilles.town at their about page: https://merveilles.town/about/more They really block a lot. Why I am curious is that I understand when some very political, or gender minority community protects itself, but it does not seem to be the case here, so I wonder what was the reason.

I have no particular problem or interest in this specific case. I am only crawling Fediverse and reading public conversations and instances' timelines and I am trying to grok the dynamics of this space. Sometimes the issues are technical and I can read the docs, sometimes (like in this case) it's more about humans, so I need to ask. I am just a curious soul exploring.

@ercanbrack
Yes, on the word Opinion.

@hellquist
It seems the rich text rendering of links is not universally useful. I noticed that when I am looking at my own interlinked toots from different mastodont instances, links and generally rich formatting are stripped.

Lesson: when speaking to others about links we want them to click, always include a naked link. Proper links are more useful when speaking to self.

@freemo
Thanks a lot for your explanations. Just out of curiosity, do you generate somewhere a plot of active users too?

Regarding the suspensions, yes I noticed on those conversations that it's sometimes very ideological. Yet, they sometimes speak about users harassing others, i just wondered how often does that happen.

Technically speaking I wonder about instance merveilles.town. This seems to be a community of makers there. They list qoto.org as suspended, which they explain means that any interaction with users from qoto is impossible. Yet I see toots from such users and I am able to check those people's timelines. So is the suspension somehow unidirectional? If I for instance send a message to such an account, will it arrive?

Also I am curious, why specifically this suspension happened?

I am just trying to make sense of this space.

@users

@users @freemo So QOTO has 13.5+k accounts. Some 100+ come every week.

I hang around here since about a month and I wonder where are all these people(?) Local timeline is fairly slow for the amount of users. Even if just 10% of all the accounts were somewhat chatty people (~1500?), we should see way more chatter all around. What is then going on here?

Also, I am curious what are those numbers of users dropping every now and then in the plot? Are these some automatic deletes? I am just curious.

Finally, I also wonder about all this chatter about banning/suspending (whatever terminology is technically correct) qoto.org. According to local timeline, these are pretty innocuous toots. So what are those thousands of accounts which do not post publicly doing?