Talk:Blackle

message: Is it just me, or does the 'functionality' section seem to be copied word for word from the blog?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.120.117.119 (talk) 02:57, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Functionality 

message: Much of the discussion about Blackle has centered on how to estimate the energy savings. (What size monitor, type of monitor, brightness/contrast settings, etc...) A simple energy conversion reveals that all of this is inconsequential. Use the original estimate: 750 MWhr per year. How much energy is this? It's the amount of electricity generated by a 500 MW power plant (an average coal plant) in about an hour and a half. That is the energy savings PER YEAR. 
To convert these energy savings into something more concrete, convert 750 MWhr into the equivalents energy obtained from a barrel of oil, using the calculator found here. 750 MWhr is only 423 barrels of oil. Compare this to the BILLIONS of barrels of oil used every year, and it becomes clear that using Blackle is inconsequential. Who cares if the calculation is off by a factor of 10? Saving 40 or 4000 barrels of oil makes no difference compared to the billions of gallons of oil or the billions of gigawatt hours of electricity consumed each year.
I had to put these comments on the discussion page, because they are "original research" or whatever. However, these facts are more important than the garbage in any of the blogs the article links to. Please read the World energy resources and consumption page to see how inconsequential Backle really is. Feel free to include any of these number in the article if you know how to get them past the "original research" censors. Thanks!
* I too think Blackle is getting away with something here that should be cleared up, but they have never stated a number, only that 'Blackle saves energy'.  I tried adding research and it got removed as well, but there should be some way to express this concept. MyTigers 00:11, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: * I would say there are no real savings, and by my reckoning Blackle consumes more power than its operators claim it saves. Even assuming their savings calculations are correct (which others have proved they are not), at the time of writing this they claim to have saved "600,000 watt hours". That's 600KWh. They've been running for about a year, and that works out at about 1.6KWh a day, just over what a single 60 watt light bulb would consume. Now even if they are using a single fairly modest server to serve up their pages (it's Google's data centres that do the actual search work), running at, say, 200 watts, they would still be consuming several times more power to run the site than they claim to save. ~Matticus UC 10:20, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Actual Energy Saved 

message: (added heading) 
This page is contradictory.
Robertson et al report a white background using only 2-3% more power than black.
In fact, in LCD monitors, power is required to turn pixels black (they are white, or rather clear by default), so using Blackle on such screens will actually increase power usage very slightly.
:The site is aimed at those who use CRT monitors.  They draw more power when displaying a white screen.  Note that the site was developed in Australia where 80% of their electricity comes from coal which emites greenhouse gases when burnt. Alan Liefting 03:53, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I have updated the article with correct figures from the report. A previous editor had not interpreted the report correctly. The total savings of electricity would be significant but with the trend towards the use of LCD monitos this saving will drop. Alan Liefting 04:22, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Comment

message: I'm very sorry, but I'm going to have to remove the sub-sections about the different types of monitor displays.  Although they are very interesting, they can't stay in this article.  Some of the info in these sub-sections belongs on articles about those display types.  The rest is original research synthesis, meaning that different factual sources have been drawn on to forge well cited, but still original research, commentary on the subject in hand.  In short, it fails WP:SYNTH. —gorgan_almighty 10:38, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removal of monitors commentaries 

message: We appear to have had a couple of accidental edit conflicts, because we were both editing the page at the same time.  Normally I would try to restore the changes you made to the article, but I didn't in this case because I didn't agree with them.  In particular, why did you put a  tag into the criticism section?  I know the old criticism section had one, but I've completely re-written it now, and I don't think there are any neutrality issues.  On a separate note, I've finished making all the edits I was going to make for now. —gorgan_almighty 12:39, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  About edit conflicts 

message: Should we mention the benefit done to the eyes by reading from a black background.  Maddoxx from the Best Website in the Universe mentions that he has a black background on his site for this reason.  He claims that monitors are not pieces of paper even though we'd like to think they are and making the background white is like making it a light bulb.  Thus, sitting for hours staring at the monitor is equivalent to staring at a light bulb.  I use Blackle for this reason.  I find it's much easier on the eyes.  Any thoughts on this?  Should it be mentioned in the article? Jstanierm 01:10, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Eyesight 

message: One need to also consider if Blackle.com is helping save energy by spreading the word.
After all there own website states that it urges people to use it as the home page to remind us 
that we need to save energy. potentially the energy saved thanks to that "guilt" factor is much more than can ever be saved by black screens.
But this is beyond Original Research .. its just a hypothesis. Is there a wikipedia template to tell people that this article is subject to current and ongoing original research that might still be unpublished but might be reported in the talk page?
--Inkiwna 15:01, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Energy Saving through marketing 

message: Has anyone tried doing searches for "Wikipedia" on both Google and Blackle? 
*The results on Google, in order, are www.wikipedia.org, with en, es, fr and de as subsections, followed by the en Main Page, with our article on Wikipedia as a subsection, followed by the Swahili Wikipedia, and so on. The article on Wikipedia is the only article displayed on the first page of 10 Google results. The rest are main pages, and one Apple "Dashboard gadget".
*The results on Blackle, however, are still very different (despite claims in the article a moment ago). The first result is our article on Global Warming. Second is the www.wikipedia.org, non-specific Wikipedia homepage. Third, our article on environment. Then the Swahili language Wikipedia in fourth, somehow making it above even the English language Wikipedia in the results. Next, it's Energy conservation, and then Effects of global warming, and so on. If Wikipedia had a "rolling eyes" emoticon, I would put it here. --Dreaded Walrus  t c 08:09, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  A bit of fun 

message: gorgan_almighty said: "Removed unverified claims. Claims like that MUST be cited, or not made at all"
MyTigers said :"disagree, this is worthy. I was skeptical as well, but this is true and notable."
I'm afraid that paragraph is more than just uncited criticism.  Unless someone can find a reliable source to back it up, it's an unfounded accusation of corruption, which amounts to liable.  We need to be very careful about accusations like that, so true or not, it should be removed until a reliable source can be found to back it up.  —gorgan_almighty 16:49, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: * How about rewording and moving into functionality then, a one sentence thing. "Blackle is also part of Googles Adsense program; as such, its search results are skewed by the environmental nature of the site."  This is how Adsense works, and it is easily verifiable.MyTigers 15:43, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: * "Blackle is part of the Google Adsense program". <-- That sentence is fine and should be added to the functionality section.  But the bit about it's search results being skewed should go in the criticism section, and it needs citation.  I'm also not totally convinced that that's what the current criticism paragraph is trying to suggest. —gorgan_almighty 15:51, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

text:  I'll move it up there MyTigers 18:13, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

text: * Yeah that's fine now. —gorgan_almighty 07:45, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recent criticism 

message: What to do about links to other sites that are related?  I have been deleting these but they keep popping up.  How about another page of links, or a parent article.  Pretty sure they don't belong here.MyTigers 21:41, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: * Agreed, does one just keep removing them?MyTigers 15:44, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: * Yeah, just remove them whenever they're added, but be careful not to violate WP:3RR. —gorgan_almighty 15:52, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

text: *Found even in the article by Mark Ontkush Wikion (talk) 08:43, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

text: *Googling Power Google gives it as fourth entry in Google. Confusion with "Power of Google", etc. Wikion (talk) 08:43, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

text: *Google has a toolbar button for it too! Wikion (talk) 10:16, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Links 

message: This reminds me of a Toyota Prius. --  Boogster  Go!  00:21, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Memories 

message: I think this should be moved to simply "Blackle".   jj137 ♠ Talk 01:39, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: * It was started as blackle only and then someone suggested to move it to Blackle.com. Life comes a full circle! Wikion (talk) 08:36, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Possible 

message: The first paragraph is lacking description and has misleading information. The website is powered by Google Custom Search. It is not developed by Heap Media as the article claims, the code has been written by Google. Blackle simply provides the domain name. I also added a summary that described the principle of the website, as per Wikipedia:Layout#First_paragraph, but it has been reverted --Nezek (talk) 22:44, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I had forgotten about this. Since there have been no objections, I'm gonna go ahead and restore it (+refs). After checking the refs the article currently provides for the lead, there's actually no claim that it's developed by Heap, one of the two refs is even called "Google goes black to go green" --Nezek (talk) 23:40, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  First paragraph 

message: I went ahead and removed the functionallity section. It had no citation and looked a lot like WP:OR, and also wasn't relevant or notable to this article specifically as it addressed issues of all google custom searches. In case you want to add it to the appropriate article, you can view in this diff  --Nezek (talk) 01:37, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  functionallity section removed 

message: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackle.com#Criticism
"The Climate Savers Computing Initiative, a consortium of large software and hardware vendors, that promotes efficient computing on a large scale, forecasted a power saving of only 10,000 Megawatts by 2010. [6]"
"Pat Gelsinger, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Intel's Digital Enterprise Group added, 'By 2010, the Climate Savers Computing Initiative will cut greenhouse gas emissions in an amount equal to removing more than 11 million cars from the road or shutting down 20 500-megawatt coal-fired power plants -- a significant step in reducing the emissions affecting our planet..."
It seems there was a misinterpretation--the source says that Pat Gelsinger was the one who forcasted the power saving, and no such criticism of blackle.com, as implied in the wikipedia article, was made. So I'm going to go ahead and remove that part of the subtopic. I hope that's alright with everybody.
Also, keep in mind the difference between power and energy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watt#Confusion_of_watts_and_watt-hours
SkpVwls (talk) 18:46, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Criticism from The Climate Savers Computing Initiative? 

message: Is it my imagination, or does this page attract an above-average amount of vandalism? It seems that every second time I check my watchlist, someone's added some over-the-top praise or completely false claims about Blackle. What gives?? mike40033 (talk) 05:24, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vandalism 

message: There are others sites like this bpled.com "black google" don't they deserve a mention?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.36.172.44 (talk) 13:26, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: That site has been spammed to this and other articles. A lot. So no, in my opinion it should not get a mention unless it becomes notable enough to have an article (in which case there could be a see-also Wikilink to it). --bonadea contributions talk 12:31, 26 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Other sites 

message: I totally dispute the claims made in this article. Whilst I do not dispute that Blackle have made the claims that they have, they are totally false because Blackle have overlooked something.
I have no doubt that Blackle have assumed that a CRT based computer monitor based on an average sized delta-gun tube has a total beam current of about 1 mA. At 25,000 volts, that is 25 watts of power being delivered by the EHT supply. Blackle have doubtless assumed that for a black picture, where the guns are cut off, the tube consumes zero power. Factor the saving downward slightly to account for the fact that some visible picture must be present, multiply by the number of monitors and time and you have the alleged energy saving.
Unfortunately, it's a myth. What has been overlooked is that colour display tubes have to be supplied from a stabilised EHT supply (otherwise the picture would get  as the brightness reduces). That stabilisation is invariably from a shunt stabilised supply (because historically, the stabiliser tube could be controlled using a relatively low voltage of about 30-40 volts). More modern monitors use a tripler circuit to supply the EHT, but this too contains a shunt connected voltage dependant resistor to stabilise the supply. The principle of operation of a shunt stabiliser is that any current that does not flow through the CRT flows through the stabiliser instead, keeping the EHT voltage practically constant. Thus: as the beam current reduces (as the overall picture gets darker), the stabiliser current rises to keep the EHT current constant (and hence power and energy). 
If the CRT is displaying a black picture, it dissipates little or no power. But the stabiliser element is now dissipating the entire 25 watts that Blackle though they were saving and that is the power being delivered by the EHT circuit regardless of the displayed brightness. The energy saving is therefore zero.
There is no saving for an LCD monitor either because the backlight tube (or LEDs) emit the same amount of light regardless of what is displayed. 86.149.142.3 (talk) 17:32, 26 June 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Disputed