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Sustainable Web Interest Group Is Formed

w3.org

11–20 of 121 posts

Re: Sustainable Web Interest Group Is Formed

#11
What, uh, do they think they're going to do? Tell people "Static sites are cool actually.".

""the IG plans to liaise with regulatory bodies to improve compliance targets""

Regulatory bodies absolutely do not care about W3C. Hell, they barely care about the IETF, IEEE, ICANN, etc.

I'm all for pushing for sustainability, but look at the other interest groups. For example, privacy. Cloudflare just published an article talking about post-quantum crypto [1] where they talk about how wild a percent of traffic would be just cert exchange (and, currently already is). There will always be competing interests, so a body that only exists to checks notes talk about ""sustainability"" on the web feels moot.

They explicitly say hardware is out of scope. Cool. So software. The only way to help sustainability is to use less or make it more efficient. Less never happens, and efficiency isn't a concern above ad revenue for literally anyone.

Honestly, I'm inclined to see this as actively harmful more than anything. Putting out statements about sustainability just dilutes the waters on web issues they might have real pull in, like standards for user privacy that DO help with sustainability. For example, making it easier to choose what content gets delivered cough DNS blackhole adblock cough means less data being transfered.

I still wish this group the best and hope that they can discuss actions of other groups (Such as the Media and Entertainment Interest Group) in context of their choice of standards impact on processing power requirements.

Honestly, reading the manifesto [2] just makes me more angry. It doesn't say anything. Go read some solar-punk manifestos by people on the Indie Web or in Solarpunk culture. Those at least say something. This is just marketing fluff for the sponsors at the bottom of the page.

[1] https://blog.cloudflare.com/another-look-at-pq-signatures/ [2] https://www.sustainablewebmanifesto.com

Re: Sustainable Web Interest Group Is Formed

#12
post #11

What, uh, do they think they're going to do? Tell people "Static sites are cool actually.". ""the IG plans to liaise with regulatory bodies to improve compliance targets"" Regulatory bodies absolutely do not care about W3C. Hell, they barely care about the IETF, IEEE, ICANN, etc. I'm all for pushing for sustainability, but look at the other interest groups. For example, privacy. Cloudflare just published an article t…

> Regulatory bodies absolutely do not care about W3C.

I suspect it will come as news to you that many governments do base laws and regulations on W3C https://www.w3.org/WAI/policies/ including EU and US Department of Justice https://www.ada.gov/resources/2024-03-08-web-rule/

Re: Sustainable Web Interest Group Is Formed

#13
post #3

I hope they're successful. I think the web really needs some "decluttering". The ratio of processing power by useful payload nowadays is unsustainable. For example any news website, in order to read some text, you need to load a ton of JavaScript, ads (some even video) that add zero value to the intended purpose. My nostalgia wants some of the early 00s web again, but I believe in something between. Which consumes fa…

I'm skimming the linked Web Sustainability Guidelines. It's pretty much the normal stuff HN-types have been banging on about in every thread on webdev for the last decade or two. I don't really see how this will change anything.

I looked to see what those guidelines had. It has nothing about pages actually having contents if JavaScript isn't ran or CSS isn't supported.

Re: Sustainable Web Interest Group Is Formed

#14
post #11

What, uh, do they think they're going to do? Tell people "Static sites are cool actually.". ""the IG plans to liaise with regulatory bodies to improve compliance targets"" Regulatory bodies absolutely do not care about W3C. Hell, they barely care about the IETF, IEEE, ICANN, etc. I'm all for pushing for sustainability, but look at the other interest groups. For example, privacy. Cloudflare just published an article t…

> What, uh, do they think they're going to do?

They published a charter. They're going to establish guidelines for sustainable web development and tools for measuring your impact. Yes, static architectures will probably be one path for improvement.

> There will always be competing interests, so a body that only exists to checks notes talk about ""sustainability"" on the web feels moot.

I'm not following this point. The existence of entrenched interests means that no opposing interests should be researched? Why is "sustainability" in quotes, is it not a legitimate pursuit, or are you implying that they have ulterior motives?

> They explicitly say hardware is out of scope. Cool.

Hardware is out of scope "unless related to hosting & infrastructure," AKA the cloud. That is an absolutely massive scope within the hardware realm.

> Honestly, reading the manifesto [2] just makes me more angry. It doesn't say anything.

It sounds like you're looking for the guidelines that this group aims to publish. A manifesto in this context is not intended to be a solution or a prescription; it's a framework for alignment towards a goal. The concrete solutions are the goal of the group.

Re: Sustainable Web Interest Group Is Formed

#16

This is a brilliant initiative. I think that less is more. Recently I was trying to inspect Twitter/X to obtain a video. You would not believe how many nested 'div' elements it was buried under. I also had to do a X icon to replace the Twitter bird. So I went to get the official one and make it into my lean SVG. Again, you would not believe how much bloat was in what should have been a very simple file. This is no ra…

Twitter regularly changes the location of source videos because as X they now charge for the ability to download them directly. I've also noticed on iOS, if you attempt to screen record a video the app essentially crashes or glitches the video player.

Re: Sustainable Web Interest Group Is Formed

#17
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm skimming the linked Web Sustainability Guidelines. It's pretty much the normal stuff HN-types have been banging on about in every thread on webdev for the last decade or two. I don't really see how this will change anything.

Now it can carry a weight similar to WCAG levels, which means that product managers and customers might pay more attention to these requirements, especially if they like ticking boxes. "Our new update means we reach WGAC 2 Level AA to > 90% and WSG to 60%, next release we aim to reach WSG to >70%" might be something we hear next year.

Do you really think the same news organizations that send the user 4mb worth of cross origin Javascript just to show 6kb of text is really gonna back track like that?

Re: Sustainable Web Interest Group Is Formed

#18
post #10

From the manifesto... > The products and services we provide will use the least amount of energy and material resources possible. Is this from the same W3C that has been pushing us all since 2013 to upload our locally hosted files to one of 3 major cloud providers who just happen to be megadonors to W3C? Funny now that we have to send our personal files across the internet. I wonder what the sustainability "under/ove…

Are you suggesting we'd use less energy and materials if we stored things on physical media and when we needed to share something we send a physical copy via snail-mail or courier?

Re: Sustainable Web Interest Group Is Formed

#19
post #18
post #10

From the manifesto... > The products and services we provide will use the least amount of energy and material resources possible. Is this from the same W3C that has been pushing us all since 2013 to upload our locally hosted files to one of 3 major cloud providers who just happen to be megadonors to W3C? Funny now that we have to send our personal files across the internet. I wonder what the sustainability "under/ove…

Are you suggesting we'd use less energy and materials if we stored things on physical media and when we needed to share something we send a physical copy via snail-mail or courier?

[deleted]

Re: Sustainable Web Interest Group Is Formed

#20
post #10

From the manifesto... > The products and services we provide will use the least amount of energy and material resources possible. Is this from the same W3C that has been pushing us all since 2013 to upload our locally hosted files to one of 3 major cloud providers who just happen to be megadonors to W3C? Funny now that we have to send our personal files across the internet. I wonder what the sustainability "under/ove…

I'm confused by this comment and the accompanying link. This is a wiki page that was created in 2013 and hasn't been touched since. It contains no recommendations, just some random thoughts that look like they were written spur of the moment and then forgotten about.

Oh, and it starts with a giant disclaimer that says "This Wiki page is edited by participants of the RDWG. It does not necessarily represent consensus and it may have incorrect information or information that is not supported by other Working Group participants, WAI, or W3C. It may also have some very useful information."

Do you have anything else to point to to suggest that the W3C is "pushing us all since 2013" towards 3 cloud providers?

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