Best practices

Revision as of 15:29, 21 December 2021 by Paula (talk | contribs)

The Fediverse is a kind and inclusive place and to keep it that way it's good to follow a few guidelines.

Accessibility

  • Use image and video descriptions
    Describe what is going on in your videos and images for blind and deaf people. You don't need to do so in the post, but there is a caption function in Mastodon and most other software
  • Use CamelCase
    When using hashtags that contain composite nouns or are even full sentences write the first letter of each word large. E.g. #FridaysForFuture or #WhatDoWeWantClimateJustice
  • Don't use too many emoji.
    Screen readers read them as text and lots of emoji can be horrible to listen to.

Inklusion

Write in a way that is inclusive and respectful to everybody. E.g.: avoid ableistic terms like "retard" or "gimp", anti-queer language like "gay" meaning "bad" and racist terms like "blacklist" (use "blocklist" instead) or "master" and "slave" for software branches.

Data Privacy

  • Don't repost retweets to the Fediverse
    There are Twitter-Mastodon crossposters. It is generally okay to use them, but try to avoid giving Twitter credit on Mastodon. Generally it's best to crosspost from Mastodon to Twitter but if you have to do it the other way around make sure you don't crosspost retweets and don't crosspost posts that contain Twitter handles.
  • Avoid links to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Netflix, Spotify, ...
    There are alternatives for most of them. E.g if you have to link to a Twitter thread use Nitter, if you want to post a video and you have the rights to upload the video use PeerTube, otherwise use Invidious, if you want to link to Instagram use Bibliogram, ...
  • Avoid using short links
    It's hard to know what's behind them. Could be a link to a privacy friendly site or to e.g. a Google site.