Comment by kanamekun | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kanamekun | Hacker News Reader

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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.

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