In large scale distributed systems, strong consistency criteria like sequential consistency and linearizability are often very expensive or even unachievable. This talk investigates the best ways to specify the objects that are still possible to implement in these systems. We assert that it is still possible to separate their specification in two complementary facets: an abstract data type that specifies the functional aspect of the operations and a weak consistency criterion that describes the level of quality of service ensured by the object in its distributed environment. We illustrate these concepts by an implementation in the D programming language: abstract data types are described by classes in the program and consistency criteria are taken from a list in the CODS library. We also draw up a map of the space of weak consistency criteria, organised around three families of primary criteria (state locality, eventual consistency and validity) and three families of secondary criteria (update consistency, pipelined consistency and serializability). Each secondary criterion strenghtens two primary criteria, but the three criteria can not be implemented together in considered systems. We also study the effects of causality on these families.