Re: A request for help - an idea called carbon.txt

On 12/06/2019 11:21, Tim Frick wrote:
> This is a really interesting idea, Chris. I can see great potential. How 
> would you propose getting over the hurdle of adoption? People use 
> robots.txt because they want to somehow influence search engines, which 
> in turn, ostensibly, improves their results, giving them more (and 
> better) traffic, which can be used to grow or otherwise somehow improve 
> their business or organization. There’s an intrinsic business motivation 
> there. Do you think it is possible to create similar motivation for 
> carbon.txt?
> 

robots.txt is basically a "no trespassing sign".  It is one that needs 
to easily readable, at all entrances to the site, and it is one that 
achieves an objective that site owners want to achieve, without the need 
to check the identities of all visitors.

People who don't know about it are unlikely to be concerned about crawlers.

carbon.txt is more like one of the proliferating number of legal notices 
that are needed on web sites:  modern slavery statements, privacy 
policies, terms and condition, and, in the EU, E-commerce directive 
information.  These are generally things that sites would rather not 
include, so they will be hidden away in parts of the site that people 
don't look at.  I think any legal requirement to provide this 
information would result in this tactic, rather than a special site 
resource being used.  Although some of these are not required of small 
business, small businesses often fail to include those that are mandatory.

There is quite a lot of work involved in calculating the figures 
required, and currently I don't think the information needed to so so is 
available.  The costs will only be valid at some particular point in 
internet, which may not be on the route to all subscribers.

Some of the proposal seems to assume the artificial market for 
electricity that exists in the UK.  I don't know if this is implemented 
in many other countries.  An example of the artificiality is that, if 
every customer chose renewable sources, the intermittent nature of them 
would mean that there would be many power cuts.  Even now it is possible 
for all the green customers to choose wind power, and on a calm day 
there to be no wind generated electricity going into the the network. 
Basically the market distributes money between different types of 
supplier but doesn't ensure that the same mix of energy is actually 
going into the network at any one time; coal power, wind power and 
nuclear power are indistinguishable once they are in the network.

If it is not a legal requirement, only those with a point to make will 
actually include the information. In the UK we have a Food Hygiene 
Rating System.  Although all food business should be rated, you will 
generally never find people with low ratings displaying theirs, whilst 
those with the top too ratings almost always do.

Received on Wednesday, 12 June 2019 10:58:35 UTC