Natalya Kozlovskaya: “Who cares who draws OpenStreetMap: men or women?”
Natalya Kozlovskaya - in addition to being one of the leaders in cycling in Togliatti and the organizer of the Velo Togliatti club, she also loves to draw tracks and paths in OpenStreetMap in her free time. Of course, besides the traditional questions about OSM, we talked to her about why there are no women in the RU-OSM community.
- How did you meet OpenStreetMap?
- About three years ago, the Maps.Me and OSMAnd navigation mobile applications became quite popular. Studying their maps, I noticed that in some places there are many details important for the cyclist, for example, paths or paths in the forest, and in some places there aren’t at all. But in any case, these maps were much more accurate and more detailed than their counterparts from Google or Yandex. I was wondering: how can I add something to these cards. It turned out that these applications take data from the OpenStreetMap project, information in which everyone can enter.
I believe that if a user can edit something in a project, you should definitely try and give a hand to it. To make edits, I was recommended to install the JOSM editor. So I started drawing a map in OSM.
- Where does the interest in navigation applications come from?
- Our cycling club is more tourist than sports and racing. Therefore, we always had a problem: where to go and how not to get lost there. Before smartphones appeared, we traveled on old printed maps of the Samara region, which naturally have not been updated for many years. For example, many times I personally came across the fact that the road was drawn on the map, but in reality it was overgrown.
Then there was a period when the first navigators began to appear. I had a Garmin. Not an expensive pleasure, but it seemed to me uncomfortable. Too long to download free cards, and paid ones are expensive. In addition, then they were not particularly able to lay routes. Everything was somehow wrong.
The situation changed dramatically when smartphones became available to many. At the same time, free mobile navigation applications appeared. I believe that these two factors were the impetus for the development of amateur cycling. You didn’t have to buy anything extra: you take the phone, download the program to it and go camping. Everything is in one device.
- Was it difficult for you to master JOSM?
- No. I am a designer, and therefore every day I work in various graphic editors, including drawing lines and dots. You can say that drawing a map is almost the same as working in Adobe Illustrator. Is everything intuitive to me in JOSM? It took me one evening to master it: I read articles, “dig deeper” - everything is clear. But I am a teapot. My knowledge is enough only to draw houses in villages and paths in forests. I am on the path of least resistance - I use blanks. Have a template? I use it.
- In the Russian OSM community, which “sits” on the forum and in the chat on Telegram, there are no women. In this regard, the participants of these sites from time to time raise the question: why so? How would you answer this question?
- I can’t answer for all women. Personally, I do not see the difference between a man and a woman in this regard. Do sexual characteristics somehow affect the fact that a man can sit on a forum, but a woman does not? It seems to me that this depends on the mindset, and with it it happens that men are women and women are men. Why am I not going to the forum or chat OSM-RU? I go to the forums when I have any question or problem. In OSM, I have no questions and problems. All I need is clear to me. Just “kill” a couple of hours on the Internet - I have a Velo Togliatti club community for this.
- The community is not only talk, but also various actions aimed at the development of OSM. For example, not so long ago they laid floors, before that - porches.
- For me, a community is when a person wants to be part of something in common, big and good. What you want to spend your time with other people. Voluntarily. For this I have Velo Togliatti. A bike club takes more time than work. I simply physically cannot take part in the full life of another community.
But I will still answer your question: why are there more men than women in OSM in Russia than women? I have two assumptions. First, a map is something that, in particular, is connected with tourism, and therefore it is drawn by people who are interested. Because if you never use the map at all, don't go camping, don't travel, then why do you need to draw it? As a tourist, I need maps, so I go and draw them, and among tourists there are always more men than women.
Second, OSM is an IT project, as you know, there are also more men than women among programmers. Conclusion: if the main consumers of OSM in Russia are men, then where do women come from?
On the other hand, what's the difference who draws OSM: men or women? Where did this question come from?
- What do you like about OSM? What do not like? To do better?
- I like everything, because I understand that OSM is a map that is drawn by exactly the same enthusiasts as I do in my free time. And therefore, if I see some of its flaw, then I take and correct it. I have no right to complain to anyone. And who should they be addressed to? To yourself? You, Natasha, didn’t sit down and draw a road? I have no right to experience negative emotions for a project that is being done by enthusiasts, activists and sane people.
OSM is one big positive thing. He is exactly what his participants do. If someone wants him to be even better, let him do it. Free cards that free people draw are one of the elements that develop our civilization.
- What would you wish a person who thinks: to map him to OSM or not?
- It seems to me that in this case, doubt can only be caused by one reason - laziness. If you need an exact map, then you go and make it and you have no doubt at all. This is everyday activism, the desire to change something around you. It can manifest itself in different ways: pick up garbage, planted a tree or draw a map. This is a human psychotype.
Why choose OSM? I have some unpleasant stories with Yandex. For two years I drew cycling routes of the Samara region there and gave links to them in my posts. One day, Yandex for some reason decided to cover the shop, they all redid it, it became inconvenient for me to use their cards personally. A similar story happened not so long ago with the Yandex.Fotki project - they were also closed. I have no more confidence in Yandex, because they do not care about their users.
- Maybe you have some kind of story related to OpenStreetMap?
- There is a stupid story. We went camping in late autumn. The first snow fell, powdered everything. The ice got up. It was near Tolyatti: on Fedorovskoye flood meadows. We walked along a great road, and for some reason it was not on the map. I came home, drew this road. Two years later, we took the same route, but in the summer. It turned out that part of this road passed through frozen channels, which in the warm season cannot be jumped over. And I remember that I drew this road. And I, it turns out, brought everyone in the wrong place. We then walked back almost 10 km. Here I am such a wonderful maper.
Communication of Russian OpenStreetMap participants is in the Telegram chat room and on the forum .
There are also groups on social networks VKontakte , Facebook , but they mainly publish news.
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Previous interviews: Victor Vyalichkin , Ivan aka BANO.notIT , Anton Belichkov , Elena Balashova , Ilya Zverev , Timofey Subbotin , Sergey Golubev .
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