Three weeks, max.planetearthsingles.comAt last, there is a green-friendly dating site for environmentally, socially and spiritually conscious singles!

Not making this up:

Types of Dating:

If you can tell us what the hell any of these mean, we should, you know, maybe get coffee or something sometime.

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Q. Greetings Umbra,

To save energy and limit greenhouse gas emissions, I've so far resisted establishing my own website. However, because I'm an author and these days almost all authors use websites to further their careers, I'm now thinking of setting one up. How much energy do websites actually consume? Are there ways to make them less energy consumptive? Do any web hosts use renewable power, and if so, which ones use the highest percentage? (BTW, a few years back after the release of my book Divorce Your Car! several people suggested my next book should be Divorce Your Computer!)

Katie Alvord
Upper Peninsula, Mich.

A. Dearest Katie,

Number one reason to divorce the computer: it makes you dumb. For example, after researching the answer to your question for a while, I decided I would go look up your website. Except, as we know, you don't have one. Something about all that staring numbs the brain.

Up front, I will say that this sludge-brained person could not find a lot of specific answers to your very good questions. But as usual, that has not stopped me from developing a general opinion out of which I will proffer various advicey suggestions such as: go ahead and make a website.

A keystroke of greenius.iStockThere are a few steps you can take that will put your website on the greener side of the giant internet meadow. Use shared hosting (of course you will -- you don't need your own entire server). Find, as you say, a host that purchases renewable energy certificates, or in some other way is "using" renewable power. There are many, and they can be found by visiting ... websites! ... and searching for "green hosting." Many advertise as 100 percent renewable, plus maybe they'll plant a tree for you, and all their employees bike to work, and also did they mention they have some fancy type of server that is already much more efficient? I found many green host businesses while trolling around; if it feels a little easier to start with a compilation, here's one "top green hosting" list I came across.

Caveat: In my own attempt to have an extended date with my computer and not a trip to the altar, I do not know enough about web hosting to evaluate these many sites. Perhaps you or some of our other users do?

The third step to the greener side of the internet meadow (one: shared hosting, two: green host) is to perhaps use a service that monitors the energy use of your website and then offsets that energy use. First your server would be "green," then the traffic coming to your site would be made "green."

There is no doubt that websites use energy, and there recently was a big fluff about how much energy a Google search consumes (Google claims 0.0003 kWh, or about 0.2 g of CO2 per page search). One researcher involved in the kerfluffle estimates that "browsing a basic website generates about 20 mg of CO2 for every second you view it." That's the closest answer I could find to the meat of your question. You may also be interested in this dense narrative of research on energy use of information technology and office equipment, which accounted for maybe 3 percent of all U.S. electricity use in 2003.

Adding a website to your author portfolio is not a way to reduce your carbon emissions -- especially as word spreads about your website and thousands come to visit. As carbon-based actions go, though, it is not a crazy one. If you already divorced your car, you likely have a well developed plan as to how and when you bring new carbon emissions in to your life. All I can tell you is, if a website is a necessary evil for your career, there are ways to render it less harmful. I look forward to seeing what you decide.

Surfily,
Umbra

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Is there a tradeoff between economics and the environment?

I've been visiting a wide variety of environmental blogs lately to get my daily dose of information and commentary. I have settled on eighteen feeds that I visit most days, opening tabs to articles of interest from each to be read right away or later in the day. This has given me the opportunity to compare sites. I discuss a select few below in no particular order.

The Huffington Post

There are some sites that I dread simply because it takes so long to load. The Huffington Post is one of those. My computer clicks and groans while it battles with pop-ups and dozens of interactive ads after clicking on the blog site. It happens all over again when I pick an article to read and again if I want to read another article because you have to hit the back arrow and suffer through this one more time. They need a clean list of article links below each article so readers don't have to suffer quite as much. My scroll wheel jerks and stalls the entire time I'm there. Needless to say, I sometimes skip this site just to save time and frustration.

I just tried to click on a link but got caught by an expanding Toyota ad… must escape… nooooo. Arrrg. Well, that burned up half a minute.

There are ways to speed things up of course. With Firefox you can disable the JavaScript and images. You can always skip the main page and use the feed list to jump around, which I do but most casual readers don't use feeds. They are dependent on the site design.

The comment field is pretty decent, except it is moderated. Moderating comments before they are posted slows down dialogue. The fact that most sites don't do it is all the proof you need that it isn't necessary. I think it's a control issue. They could assign some flunky to monitor comments as they appear instead of putting them in a holding tank until someone gets around to posting them. This would save them money, facilitate discussion, and in doing so draw more readers to be snared by the dozens of gyrating, CPU eating interactive ads.

The authors also have a tiny black and white image so they can say, "Look Ma! I have my picture in the Huffington post!"

Treehugger

I have never been a fan of Treehugger but that is changing, right along with the changes in their website and writing. Everything about the site has slowly and seamlessly improved over the years. It still tends to be a little slow to navigate but not as bad as Huffington.

One of the best features, among many, can be found at the bottom of the main page: a simple, easy to use and understand way to dig through past articles in chronological order:

...elegant simplicity and functionality sprinkled with a little common sense. Go to the bottom of the Grist main page, find the link called "More from Grist" and click on it.

And to ice the cake, the site has plenty of variety to pick from:

"We add over 30 posts each day to our archive…"

One thing that has always bothered me about the Treehugger site, and I'm not really sure why, is the name. I know I'm not alone because I have heard other people say the same thing over the years. Names like Grist, or Huffington Post did not mean much of anything. They had to earn their connotations. Treehugger on the other hand is a derogatory term coined by anti-environmentalists. It is still used to denigrate environmentally minded individuals. Links to articles with Treehugger as part of the URL address are not taken very seriously in a debate.

Grist

Most of us don't visit web sites just because they look cool. People are after content but will go elsewhere if they have to pull their hair out to get at it. The Huffington post blog is just a collection of articles surrounded by as much advertising as can physically be squeezed onto a computer screen. Treehugger is relatively austere with a simple vertical list of posts, each with an interesting picture, bordered with inoffensive ads. As with a work of art, the look of a website is subjective. Beauty really is in the eye of the beholder. Open two tabs. Put the Grist main page in one and Treehugger's in the other. Go back and forth to compare them. If looks count for much, all websites would look the same.

Functionality on the other hand is not very subjective. Few of us would frequent a site that took ten minutes to load.

Grist has been in a prolonged state of metamorphosis. I would like to make a few suggestions to help speed the day a butterfly emerges, assuming these suggestions are not already in work (cue munchkins singing).

A very high priority task is to put in place a simple chronological, uncategorized list of posts similar to the one shown for Treehugger above that will easily allow viewers to find and follow older articles. This isn't a technological issue. Adding pages and links to other pages is straightforward. Surely this is somewhere on the to-do-list. It just needs to be moved near the top.

I would do something very similar to what Treehugger has done. It's simple, easy to understand, and very functional. They won't mind. Imitation is the highest form of flattery. Gristmill had a chronological list, like virtually every other site, although I could never remember which arrow (the one pointing left or the one pointing right) sent you up or down. Note that Treehugger also lumps topics in categories for people who prefer that, just as Grist has done with its Politics, Climate & Energy, Food, Business, Living Green, and Placemaking (and no, I don't know that that means either) sections.

The old search function was one of the best around. You could easily find anything with it, even in the comments. This was one of Grist's many advantages over other sites, one of many advantages it no longer has. I'm hoping it is on the to-do list and that the original functionality will be matched (restored, copied exactly).

Many of us who use feeds are expecting to see a long chronological list of everything that appears on Grist as Treehugger has. Presently Grist's feed covers about eight articles whereas Treehugger's list covers 35. To be perfectly honest, I want a functional feed so I can bypass the bells and whistles on the main page. A feed is a double-edged sword for a website. It allows people to dodge the main page but then again, I wouldn't bother with a lot of sites if they didn't have feeds. A feed is not a substitute for a functional website because few people use feeds.

The Gristmill comment bar was truly unique and universally praised by all users. It put the Grist blog on a plane above everyone else. It facilitated discussion and invited participation. The only improvement I could ask for would be to make it scrollable and to increase its length. The bar let you instantly track "who" was commenting. There were certain commenters you always wanted to read and others you could safely ignore. Comments are not shiny bobbles handed to viewers to attract them to your main articles. They complete and enhance those articles. They often make the article more attractive. They are often better written and more informed than the original article and they are free! Without comments, Internet articles are just paperless versions of newspaper articles. Commenters are one key to success on an Internet web sight. They should be facilitated and respected. The new site does a pretty good job with comments, other than the much missed comment bar.

Gristmill once had the best archive system on the web. You could find anything written by anyone, commenter, guest contributor, or staff writer. That advantage went out the window a few years ago.

There is no formula for success. Ideas that work are usually stumbled upon. It seems to me that good ideas should be maintained and built upon rather than discarded in the endless search for improvement.

Of course, none of the above matters if you don't also have gobs of interesting and varied articles pouring in.

Grist is still a work in progress with many bugs left to work out but I'm seeing light at the end of this tunnel.

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Jimmy Wales.

Jimmy Wales, best known as a cofounder of Wikipedia, is now channeling some of his energy and ambition into the environmental realm, aiming to build "the world's handbook for going green."

Wikia, Inc., Wales' for-profit company (not to be confused with Wikipedia, a project of the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation), announced this month that it's launching Wikia Green, which Wales describes as "an encyclopedia from a green perspective." Built on a wiki platform, which allows anyone to contribute or edit content, Wikia Green aims to amass a collection of articles on all kinds of eco-topics -- how-to advice, explanations of environmental science and technology, profiles of green groups and greenish people, etc.

Wikia, Inc. itself is also going green. The company has reduced its server need by more than 50 percent over the past six months and is pursuing certification from the San Francisco Green Business Program. It also recently relocated its office from the San Mateo Valley to San Francisco to be more centrally located for most employees.

Grist caught up with Wales to discuss his vision for Wikia Green.

Why start Wikia Green?

We're looking to bring together people who are interested in green topics to build a central repository of knowledge -- a central encyclopedia, if you will, of content from a green perspective. The idea is to have a place that lots of people can link to and go to that explains environmental and green concepts, but also covers anything in the world that the community is interested in from a green perspective.

Just to give you an idea of what I mean, if you a take a look at someone like Leonardo DiCaprio in Wikipedia, [his entry is] all about his acting career with maybe a couple of sentences about his views on green matters, whereas [his entry on Wikia Green] would focus much more strongly on that because that's what people would be interested in from a green perspective.

Is Wikia Green aimed at a general audience that doesn't know a lot about green issues?

Yeah, I think that's the direction the community is going to take it; that's basically what we have in mind. I'll give you an example: biodiesel. If you're an ordinary person, you may want to know more about biofuels and biodiesel, like, what are the pros? What are the cons? What is the current status? You can find information online, but if you look at the Wikipedia entry on biodiesel, it's very scientific and not very consumer-friendly or green-oriented. It's sort of a chemistry article. Wikia Green would be a place where people could come together and put the basics of what you need to know if you're interested in environmental issues and you want to know about biodiesel.

How have you been developing the entries for Wikia Green? Have the entries thus far been generated by staff or the community?

It's a little bit of both. We've had some staff working on it and we've done some quiet outreach to people in the community. We're also working with ecofabulous, and we're talking with some other people about sharing content back and forth so people have the ability to reuse our content. Everything we do is open-source, so everything is under a free license; anyone can take our content, modify it, and reuse it. Anyone can contribute.

How do you find community members and content editors? Do you reach out to people, or do they pop up naturally?

A lot of it is popping up naturally, a lot of it's just general outreach -- letting people know that this resource is here and that it's trying to be a neutral space for lots of green people to come together and do something. But then also we do a lot of specific outreach. As I've traveled over the last few months, I've been putting together green dinners with green influencers and just trying to talk to people in this space and say, "Here's what we're trying to do, give us some ideas, tell us what you think this should be like."

Which green influencers have you met with?

Zem Joaquin at ecofabulous, and obviously we're partnering with her as a result of that. I've had dinner with Graham Hill at Treehugger, and [environmental architect] Bill McDonough.

You say Wikia Green will be a neutral space. What will that mean for politically charged topics like biofuels or climate change?

The basic idea for Wikia Green is that it's from a green point of view. In other words, we're going to say to people that this is not the place to come and have a debate about global warming. I'm sure some of that will go on because people are people and that's what some people like to do. But at the end of the day, this is an advocacy site. We don't intend for it to be stridently political -- that isn't really the idea here. This is a site where the participants agree to some sort of basic ideas, and obviously there's a lot of internal debate, but this is fundamentally a green website.

How will it differ from other green sites -- say, Grist or Treehugger?

The main thing is that we're striving to be a meeting ground. A wiki tends to be very different from other types of community spaces. We hope to produce content on various topics -- biodiesel would be a good example -- which a blogger could link to. A green blogger could say, "Ok, I'm going to write a post today about biodiesel, but I want to make sure that my readers are up to speed on what it is and what some of the advantages and disadvantages are, so I'm going to link to Wikia Green for that."

Like a knowledge bank, but not quite as detailed as a Wikipedia article?

Yeah, exactly. An encyclopedia from a green perspective.

How many people do you hope to have join Wikia Green? At what point would you consider it a success?

Obviously we want it to be as big as possible, but that's kind of a lame answer. Ultimately what we would like to see is a healthy community, small or large, but it's friendly people doing good work and having fun together. We've had some very successful wikis with fairly small communities. Just to give a silly example: the Muppet community at muppet.wikia.com. It's a pretty small community, but they've created a fabulous resource and they're very proud of it and they have a lot of fun doing it. In other cases -- and in this case -- I think the topic is much bigger and obviously you want to get a bigger community because there's a lot to manage.

In general, what proportion of wiki users are editors and what proportion are just readers?

It varies from topic to topic. In some topics, the only people who really care about the topic are very intense fans and so you've got a higher proportion of editors to readers. In others, you've got a very broad topic of very broad interests, but only a few people are into it enough that they want to write about it. I suspect Wikia Green is going to be more toward the latter, and part of the motivation for creating this is that we know there are these very intense people out there who have a lot of knowledge and they're doing a lot of work. Right now they're just talking to each other more than anyone else, and we think those people are going to produce content that lots of people are interested in reading. Right now there are a lot of people for whom green issues aren't a center point of their thinking or their lives, but they're interested and they're supportive. They just basically want to come and read and learn.

Will Wiki, Inc. be going green as well?

Yes, at Wikia we're working to become a green-certified company. We just recently moved our office from down in the [San Mateo] Valley into San Francisco because we realized that the total number of people commuting from the city down into the valley was much higher than the people who lived down there. All of us who don't like going down to the valley whined about it a lot, so I have to admit that it wasn't purely a green move, but we were pretty pleased that it had that impact as well.

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