Hacker News Reader

Comment by nowarninglabel | Hacker News Reader

Julia,

One thing to note is Kiva has been doing direct lending in Kenya for about 2 years now using M-PESA via Kiva Zip. Zidisha still has some differences, but I'm surprised at the confrontational tone a lot of Zidisha posts have taken towards Kiva. We're both trying to solve some of the same problems, would be great if instead of negativity, we could work together on doing that, share learnings etc. Anytime I get the chance, I share learnings or offer to help Watsi, and I'd like to think I could feel the same way towards Zidisha.

View on HN

Hi nowarninglabel, I did publish a post last week comparing our service with Kiva Zip: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/julia-kurnia/zidisha-vs-kiva-z...

I wrote this to provide greater clarity to our users and the public, who frequently asked how our services were different. Some readers had the impression that the post was meant to attack Kiva Zip. That was not my intention.

In fact, Kiva Zip and Zidisha have helped each other, and exchanged lessons learned, for over two years now. See https://zip.kiva.org/blogs/4

Was just reading up on Kiva and Zidisha on Wikipedia, and noticed this on the Kiva talk page. Looks like someone at Zidisha (from a Mountain View IP) edited Kiva's Wikipedia page to add criticism of Kiva and plug Zidisha. Is this part of the "help" you're referring to above?

<< Zidisha Edits

Removed the lengthy section spotlighting a known competing organization, Zidisha from the interest rates section. The information is consistent with Zidisha marketing language and the editor IP is attached to a series of edits inserting Zidisha into other pages. Seems like clear COI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/67.188.17...

IP is also in Mountain View, where Zidisha is working this quarter http://www.ip-adress.com/reverse_ip/67.188.179.148 https://www.zidisha.org/forum/threads/zidisha-launches-at-y-... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Djbrusca (talk • contribs) 17:01, 3 March 2014 (UTC) >>

Hi kanamekun, thanks for bringing up the point about Zidisha being a competing organization with Kiva. Do you think it would be better for readers if they were not aware of Zidisha as an alternative way of addressing the high interest rates charged by Kiva partners?

That's not how Wikipedia works. Everyone always thinks that readers should be made aware of their own service, so they're constantly editing promotional info into various pages.

At the very least, you should always disclose your affiliation with Zidisha when making edits:

<< COI (Conflict of Interest) editing is strongly discouraged. COI editors causing disruption may be blocked. Editors with COIs who wish to edit responsibly are strongly encouraged to follow Wikipedia policies and best practices scrupulously. They are also encouraged to disclose their interest on their user pages and on the talk page of the article in question, and to request the views of other editors. If you have a conflict of interest, any changes you would like to propose that might be seen as non-neutral should be suggested on the relevant talk page or noticeboard. >>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest

I see now that somebody has removed the mention of Zidisha as a lower-interest alternative and left a discussion of Kiva Zip in its place.

It looks like someone reverted your conflicted edits, and posted about the edit to the Talk page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kiva_(organization...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Kiva_(organization)#Zidish...

That's pretty much spot on policy for Wikipedia.

Julia has collaborated with Kiva in the past.

https://zip.kiva.org/blogs/4

Reply on news.ycombinator.com