Best Practices

To improve everyone's experience on the fediverse, I ask you to consider the following. Applying various advice below will likely improve how others view your account and the instances as a whole.

Warning

Those are not part of the rules, but in some cases they can be enforced.

Politics

The instance respects free speech within reasonable, well-established limits. However, I still want to dissuade those from constantly repeating political headlines, specifically the perceived wrongs of certain political figures or geopolitical forces, with little substance. In particular:

I intentionally omitted the word "discuss." Many are not encouraging discussions, but exporting outrage to make them and their followers feel good. In some cases, accounts simply post image macros with little effort.
It is very unlikely for someone with significantly opposite political opinion to ever see your account. Note, that the vast majority of the instances you can interact with have rules against hate speech, and instances that don't are often suspended.
Certain people's attacks of political figures often involve discriminatory rhetorics. Notably, sexist and ableist languages are sometimes used. This falls under discrimination.
Certain people's fixation of political figures has been projected onto others who rightfully challenged their opinions, by attacking the commenter and engaging in ad hominem. In extreme cases, some actively seek to annoy those with what they deem as the opposite political opinion. This falls under harassment.

I encourage you to share your actual experiences, discuss policies, and propose ways to improve people's lives, not making politics a matter of sport rivalries. Please remember that many people are here to escape Twitter even before Elon Musk happened, and making the fediverse another Twitter is against the best interest of the community.

"Reply guy"

Info

Some references are borrowed from here; I recommend you to read through it.

Tip

ActivityPub's decentralized nature requires you to open a post in its original instance in order to see all the replies of the post. On the web UI, it's called "open original page."

Combining the two definitions on Wiktionary, I get

Any person who leaves frequent, unsolicited, and often inappropriate replies on someone's social media posts.

The terms are quite subjective and thus it is not a workable definition for moderation purposes, but it is clear that this is a negative experience shared by many on various social media platforms, and thus needs to be addressed.

To prevent being seen as a "reply guy," consider:

Would your reply really be helpful to them? Would your reply really be seen as helpful to them by a neutral third party? Are you really acting in good faith? (See also rule on harassment.)
Check out the other replies of the post. Have the question already been answered?
Check out the other posts of the author. Do you really know more than them?
Have some humility. Do not assume that your opinion is superior to others.

Warning

Subject to severity, non-compliance to the above may result in a warning. Repeated or explicit non-compliance may result in a limit.

Content Warning

While content warning is a useful feature to ensure personal well-being, discussions regarding what posts require content warning have been extremely fraught to the point that it actually drove people out of the fediverse. An overly-broad CW policy may also harm, rather than benefit, marginalized communities (whose entire experience can be considered "politics"). As such, we believe that it is best that we do not police it beyond the universal NSFW content. However, I ask you to:

Consider your target audience, and respect their norms (instance about page is a good starting point);
Mention hashtags or keywords in the post so that people can filter them without muting your entire account;
Explicitly, and respectfully, seek feedback from your actual audience.

Alternative text

Info

See here for how to add alt text onto attachments.

Alternative text is expected to give a description of a picture or a video to someone who may not be able to see or hear everything. It should not be a reiteration of your post content (unless the post content sufficiently describes the media), additional commentary, or a placeholder.

Good alt text is essential for people, especially those with disabilities, who use screen readers or require additional context to consume content. Also, adding alt text allows you to reflect on your post before sending it, and since alt text is searchable, it allows for better reach for your content.

See Alt Text Hall of Fame for examples on how to write a good alt text.

Tip

For example, in this post, the content is

New neighbors are moving in.

whose first image accompagnies the following alt text:

A male eastern bluebird perched on the roof of a bluebird house with a piece of straw in his mouth.

Not only the alt text accurately describes the image, it also gives enough context to people even without seeing the image: the "new neighbours" refer to Eastern bluebirds, and bringing straws to a bluebird house would be "moving in."

In cases where you may require assistance in writing the appropriate alt text, you may use the #Alt4Me hashtag.

Warning

The administration (and solely the administration) reserves the right to enforce the above on any user that it sees fit. If exercised, non-compliance will result in a reminder, and explicit unjustified refusal to comply will result in a limit. In general, this is to be exercised on accounts that post to local timeline in high frequency.

Warning

When encountering a post that does not contain alt text, one should either kindly provide one or signal it with #Alt4Me. Any attempt at harassing the author will be dealt with under harassment, discrimination or both.

Tips for Exposure

Note

Your bio is searchable if you have opted into the user directory, but hashtags don't particularly improve your profile's exposure. Note that certain platforms (such as bots that read #nobot hashtags, as well as fediverse.info) do make use of hashtags in bio.

If you want to have more people discover your account, consider the following:

There are toggleable settings in Preferences => Public Profile => Privacy & Reach.
Outside of Mastodon itself, there are public user directories like Trunk or fediverse.info.
Use hashtags to allow people to better find your post (but please be mindful and not use hashtags excessively; also, for accessibility purposes, please use CamelCase for hashtagging phrases).
Follow relevant hashtags and interact with other users.
Consider writing a public introduction post, indicating your interests in hashtags. Remember to include #introduction and pin the post as well!