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

Thanks, Chris! Great idea, I love it. I dont think you need a business case for it. Maybe its more or less a "idealistic" thing... it is the same strategy like humans.txt: https://humanstxt.org/


‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
On Wednesday, 12. June 2019 12:57, David Woolley <forums@david-woolley.me.uk> wrote:

> 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.