New Kiva feature! (List View or Map View)

[Guest]

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[Christopher]

I have also sent a note to contactus.

[abc]

Good man, I say, old chap!!    OOPS (old)  Jane

It is a mesmerizing site, though disturbing in terms of the obvious privacy problem.
I keep waiting for the lender page of Scott's friend with the chaps to show up. Yeow.

I'll write to contactus as well. Seems like a cool marketing tool someone did not think through.
(I'm frankly not all that happy about the map feature on the lender pages either. Seems to me
that someone could have spent their Kiva time in a more worthwhile pursuit.)

Ann
who is beginning to understand why some lenders prefer to remain anonymous

[wthepoo]

(I'm frankly not all that happy about the map feature on the lender pages either. Seems to me
that someone could have spent their Kiva time in a more worthwhile pursuit.)

Hm, like what?

I mean, we asked for this, here, (more specifically, I think it were Christopher and Geekthegreek, and I was happy they did so), and while it is probably not very worthwhile for lenders like Kay, Good Dogg and even you, Ann, and me (and most KFs), because it gets too crowded, soon, I think it's a very important addition especially for lenders with just a few loans. And I guess it was _rather_ easy and not exceptionally time-consuming after the Map View on loans had been implemented.

So good job and thank you from me, Kiva.  Just one small problem: It seems to take quite long to load Kay's and Good Dogg's lender pages now... or is that just my computer/internet connection, once again?

Best wishes,
Wolfgang.

[Christopher]

[snip] Just one small problem: It seems to take quite long to load Kay's and Good Dogg's lender pages now... or is that just my computer/internet connection, once again?

With the extra data needed to populate the map the file size for the page is much larger - and with over 4,000 loans is much larger still.
From: http://www.selfseo.com/website_speed_test.php

Domain          Size               Load Time
kiva.org        36.67 KB        0.46 seconds
kay1272        1875.96 KB        40.93 seconds

4,000 loans = nearly 2MB

These new features probably need real world testing - which I think we are doing quite well at.

[abc]

...and since it seems like something that they might want to address pretty soon, have copied it to Sam Mankiewicz, Kiva's CTO.

Peter

I'm a little dense this a.m. Peter.   Is Mankiewicz's address readily available?

[Alphecca]

I just noticed that there's now a "map view" option on Kiva lender pages...
You can zoom in to see individual loans, though Google Maps seems to have to work very hard to do that, and it's quite a slow process.

I tried my lender page in map view and it looks good. But I noticed that unlike the Loan map views, the borrowers are not mapped to their city/town of origin, only the country. The borrower loan markers seem to be randomly scattered around the center point of their country.
Although the city of the lender on some loan applications is anonymous, but most of the time it isn't. I think it would be good to see where the city is located, too.
Does anyone have an idea why Google doesn't map these accurately within country?

By the way, I agree with the opinion in this thread that KivaVision violates the privacy agreement, big time! That is, unless these particular people have waived it, and given Kiva permissions to post personal details.

[waywardcats]

By the way, I agree with the opinion in this thread that KivaVision violates the privacy agreement, big time! That is, unless these particular people have waived it, and given Kiva permissions to post personal details.

Here is the section of the Kiva privacy policy which I feel is applicable to this issue:

http://www.kiva.org/about/privacyPolicy
# Kiva will not disclose your personally identifiable lending activity to any third party without consent. Kiva reserves the right to record and display anonymous lending activity on the Website and display the general regions where our lenders are located.

# We take privacy seriously and we value yours.

I have also sent an email to contactus, and I have removed my personally identifying information from the "my account" section of Kiva.  Since I see the information on Kivavision is pulled from those pages instead of only the "my Lender Page" section.  I hope that Kiva will address this issue very quickly, as it appears to me also that they have violated their own stated policy by disclosing this information.

-Kerry-

[Kay]

Here is the section of the Kiva privacy policy which I feel is applicable to this issue:

http://www.kiva.org/about/privacyPolicy
# Kiva will not disclose your personally identifiable lending activity to any third party without consent. Kiva reserves the right to record and display anonymous lending activity on the Website and display the general regions where our lenders are located.

# We take privacy seriously and we value yours.

Excellent, waywardcats.

[Kay]

Thanks Scott.  It was my browser.  Goodbye Firefox, hello Opera, in which Map View works fine...

Thank you, Peter.  Opera was the only way I was able to get my lender page(s) to load.   It's still difficult to navigate from page-to-page, though. 

[abc]

I wrote them once this a.m., then was looking again at the
link just now and noticed one family's photo that includes their
children's faces, and of course, now their first and last
names. Yikes. So I fired up the old email machine
and wrote them again.

And then see some fellow whose first name does not even
appear on his lender page... oops, there it is on KivaVision.
Grrr.

Is there someone over there besides the poor beleaguered
ContactUs to direct what seems to many of us to be a timely
concern? I'm starting to feel like putting on some chaps. (Or not.)