Ian, Alan, Glenda, Dan, Wolfgang, thanks! You've brought up some very, very pertinent examples and points to consider.
I don't have a problem with the fact that some borrowers (not all-I have one lady borrower who will receive her loan tomorrow, and the loan was posted on Kiva a month ago) have received their loan money before their loan request was posted on the Kiva website. At first, when this became more explicit for me a long time ago, my bubble of idealism felt a little deflated, but that didn't last very long.
At least since late 2008, Kiva wasn't any less transparent, I feel - all the information has been readily accessible since then, and all lenders that took their time to read through the Help Center (or in fact even the loan requests that featured the "Date Disbursed") had access to it. Obviously, many lenders didn't take this time and fell for the - granted: simplified (but then, in this simplicity highly unlikely and in fact impossible - short version of the Kiva story. I have a hard time blaming Kiva for that...
I agree with Wolfgang that the lenders do have some responsibility in informing themselves, in taking actions themselves to increase or clarify their understanding of things, to ferret out (as Jan worded it elsewhere in the forum
) the information/fine print.
