this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2023
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A workshop for the memes of production.

Submit new emoji here.

A good submission is:

  1. Visually clear at a small size (120 pixel width) [This does not mean upload the small image, this means upload the source image or full size cutout but test prior.]
  2. Have a transparent background to the greatest degree possible. This online tool can remove many backgrounds.
  3. Display a clear emotion or purpose
  4. If including text, should be properly sized to be readable
  5. "Evergreen" and not something that will be irrelevant after the next news cycle
  6. Formatted in PNG, GIF, or SVG to make our file optimization cycles easier. If svg initially, send svg in a seperately hosted link to WhyEssEff. Same with gif, as we render them as mp4 IIRC.
  7. Have proposed title as the title of the post, nothing more, nothing less.
  8. Post body should include a suggested category and keywords.
  9. Max height of 3 times the width.

Rules:

  1. No reactionary or reactionary-adjacent expressions. The purpose of an image is what it expresses. Some clear examples for this rule:
    • Allowed: Broken fasces, burning stars-and-bars, rotated Mussolini
    • Disallowed: Body-shaming, Pepes, gay-shaming the enemy (e.g. those pictures of Putin and Trump that libs love to post), certain hateful wojaks (even if recontextualized)
    • If you think you have touched on a grey area, see rule 7 for how to litigate this.
  2. ~~Nothing Vaush-related is allowed~~
    • To be honest, I broke this rule, so it's pretty much moot. Just run it by me first in DMs or matrix. Vaush is a bit of a dead horse, so to speak, so they're still generally discouraged. The qualification for a viable emote referencing his existence is more a matter of execution -- @WhyEssEff
  3. No desecration of religious imagery. This includes things like burning Israeli/Saudi flag emojis. If you can modify the flags while still accurately representing countries without including said imagery, it is much preferred.
    • A grey area can be argued around whether the symbol has colloquially evolved past its religious origins (one example of this that can be relatively agreed upon is the Union Jack, which is more a symbol of colonialism if anything). See rule 7 for how to litigate this.
  4. Nothing sexually explicit or overtly horny is allowed
    • :hentai-free:
  5. No sectarianism in submissions. Pro-tendency content is fine, but we will not accept content degrading specific tendencies.
  6. No gore, no SA, no sui-bait. Nothing that could reasonably trigger a comrade.
  7. If you think you're touching on a grey area with a submission, message @whyesseff:matrix.org to clear it before you post.
    • DISCLAIMER: Clearing does not necessarily mean that I'll add it, just that it's alright to submit and the rules will not be the barrier to its addition -- @WhyEssEff
  8. No content that breaks the Hexbear Code Of Conduct.

Emoji are added to the codebase periodically. Emoji may or may not be accepted and the dev team has final decision.

All images submitted must be ones you have the right to share with the project. By posting images in this comm, you are agreeing that you have permission to share this image with the project.

Hexbear Code Of Conduct, ToS, Privacy Policy, etc all still apply.

WhyEssEff's makeshift emote repository mirror on her personal github.

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102
POLL: The Great Renaming, or How I Learned to Start Worrying and Dislike Shortcode Rot (hexbear.net)
submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Hey all, WhyEssEff here hey-all-scott-here

Over the past two-and-a-half or so years of being the sort-of-official emoji czar, the emote repository has grown to contain approximately 2300 distinct pictographs. As has been remarked over my tenure, this has unfortunately come with a lot of disarray. In order to address this, let me break it down in order to give proper context for it all.

The Problem kobeni-sweat

Hexbear’s emote shortcodes are notoriously obtuse and lack enforced standardization. A patchwork fix was applied to solve this in the refork, being keywords, but these only work when you are searching through the emote picker, not when you are using :shortcode-notation:.

The primary reasoning behind why this problem is a conundrum to fix is what I will call ‘shortcode rot.’ Essentially, what this entails is that:

  1. an unintuitive emote shortcode, for one reason or another, makes it into the emote repository.
  2. enough time passes for said emote to be used across multiple posts and comments.
  3. the shortcode now cannot be altered without breaking these posts’ and comments’ use of said emote.

The sources of unintuitive/unstandardized shortcodes, as far as I understand it, tend to fall into these categories:

  • attempts at brevity (e.g. biderman :biderman:)
  • emote is older than my tenure (e.g. loser :loser:, though this was one that I vividly remember making and recommending it be added back when we were stuck in the lifeboat discord, so this one’s still technically my fault shrug-outta-hecks)
  • emotions and natural language representation of pictures are ambiguous (e.g. linguistics)
  • syntactical ambiguity and non-standardization (e.g. one way this is used advantageously is that this is how we have three representations of 1984 in our emote base, 1984 :19::84:, 1984 :1984:, nineteeneightyfour :nineteeneightyfour:)
  • WhyEssEff trying to be clever (e.g. debate-me-debate-me :debate-me-debate-me: and kubrick-stare :kubrick-stare:)
  • the other ones that I can’t think of.

The Proposals theory-gary

To preface, these are merely the options I am considering at the moment. Furthermore, the subsequent poll is merely me gauging feedback on these potential options. I reserve the right not to enact or fully enact whatever the majority opinion falls behind, because I a) have a life and may not be able to address the issue meticulously, b) can’t please everyone with whatever shortcode schema we do end up with, and c) kind of am attached to certain wrinkles in the repository and would ultimately be operating on my own discretion no matter what as the head and sole maintainer of the repository.

With that out of the way:

PROPOSAL 1: Discretionary Rename Effort

Plan of Action: As I sort through the emote database, I change the ones that stick out as unstandardized and/or ambiguous by my own discretion, updating them as I go and making a pinned masterpost that I update when I change a shortcode so people can stay informed about new shortcodes.

Pros:

  1. The one that is the most realistic for me.
  2. Solves the problem for the most erroneous ones.

Cons:

  1. My discretion is biased and fallible.
  2. Changes to shortcodes that may break some older content.

PROPOSAL 2: Strict Standardization and Total Overhaul

Plan of Action: All emotes are strictly standardized according to an enforced style guide, on top of the previous proposal.

Pros:

  1. Most accessible.

Cons:

  1. 99% chance I'm not going to do this because it sucks to implement.
  2. Really really breaking changes to shortcodes.
  3. Ehhhhhhhhhhhh

PROPOSAL 3: Do Nothing

Plan of Action: It is what it is shrug-outta-hecks

Pros:

  1. No broken shortcodes, archive preserved.
  2. I can just keep to a standard in the future.
  3. I don't have to do anything.

Cons:

  1. The problem remains unsolved, so all the aforementioned issues.

The Poll i-voted

So, in order to collect feedback, here's what I ask:

Respond with the emote that corresponds to the proposal in a top level comment, except for the last option, which I'll explain below.

  • dean-smile (:dean-smile:) for Proposal 1: Discretionary Rename Effort.
  • dean-malice (:dean-malice:) for Proposal 2: Strict Standardization and Total Overhaul.
  • dean-frown (:dean-frown:) for Proposal 3: Do Nothing.
  • dean-neutral (:dean-neutral:) for something else, and explain what you suggest in your comment.

If you want to vote for a proposal that is suggested by someone else using dean-neutral, reply to their comment with a dean-neutral

Again, non-binding poll, I'm just trying to gauge the temperature on this. In about a week, I'll check this post again and tally it all up, and then I'll take that and decide how to move forward. Thanks all lea-finger-guns

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

dean-neutral please! I'm sick of having to tell people the emoji picker exists every time this comes up