Sergey Zaichenko: “If you don’t know where to get the data, get it from OSM”

Sergey Zaichenko is one of the creators of the map service of the Sputnik search portal, based on OpenStreetMap. Probably, this is one of the most successful and large-scale examples of using data from OSM in RuNet. Why it was decided to use OSM, why the community was developed, and why this service stopped updating - he told all this in an interview.

- When and how did you meet OpenStreetMap?

- This historical moment happened in 2007, when I started working at ScanEx, where I was engaged in the cartographic direction. One fine day, my colleague Volodya Slepnev, a programmer, incidentally, now works for Google (probably, if he hasn’t gone somewhere else) - he showed us OSM. Moscow in it then was a ring and several threads of the highway. Inside, there was nothing but emptiness: no houses, no roads. But London was already amazingly painted. And Volodya, looking at him, said: “That's when Moscow will be exactly the same, you can take this data and use it!” After a couple of years, this time has come - Moscow in OSM, really was already well drawn, like many other cities.

- And then you started to rule OSM?

- No, it happened a bit later. In 2009, I registered and made only a couple of edits, and then disappeared for several years. To purposefully improve the map, study editors and communicate on the forum, I started only when I started developing maps for the Sputnik search engine. In addition to pure development, we also held our card parties, and therefore I needed to understand all this and understand what was at stake.


Maps from Lego - a hobby of Sputnik cartographers Sputnik

cartoservice team (from left to right): Egor Vakhromtsev, Sergey Zaichenko, Egor Urvanov, Maxim Dolgov, Elena Korobkova-Zemlyanskaya, Maxim Dementiev, Anya Isaeva, Zhenya Lazarev

- Maybe you are in the know: why did Rostelecom decide to make maps for its search engine from OSM data? What influenced this choice?

“A very simple story.” A certain budget was envisaged for the development of the search portal; maps, apparently, were not included there. Therefore, when we told representatives of a company that was engaged in the development of Sputnik from Rostelecom, we said that you can make a good competitive card for this modest amount, if you only take free data, for example, from OSM, then they agreed, because they were limited in finances .



- You started to work with maps for Sputnik and get acquainted with the Russian OSM community. What was it like then?

- At that time I already knew him a little, since I visited a couple of GIS conferences, where I met Ilya Zverev. In 2010, there was a fairly active Moscow party. In it, everyone was kind, good, and believed in the best. I remember only one person who is more pragmatic looking at what is happening - Maxim Dubinin (founder of NextGIS). But, as I understand it, he was like that then, because he rather sucked in, got experience from this kind of activity, since the GIS topic and promoting it to the masses began to deal much earlier than us. Through all these people, I became acquainted with the world of OSM and open data.

- The map of Sputnik is neat, beautiful and elegant. How did you manage to achieve this? Many scold OSM and say that its data is incredibly difficult to work with.

- OSM has a number of its own features, for example, it’s not so simple with tags, but you need to understand that all these are technical points that you can figure out. Yes, if you want to make a beautiful map, you will have to spend time and shovel a lot of data, so that everything can be glued together. This did not bother me or surprise me at all, since I worked in a commercial organization, and therefore perfectly understood that good data cost money. All the difficulties of the OSM format are fading into the background when you look at it from an economic point of view - it is free. What else could be better? Take this data freely and make your own product from it.

- Who developed the Sputnik mapostyle?

- This was done by several cartographers, among whom was me and my colleagues - Zhenya Lazarev and Anya Isaeva.

- As far as I know, you tried to develop the Russian OSM community: held card meetings, training seminars, etc. Why did you do this?

- It was important for us to show that we not only take data from OSM, but also return something. The relationship is obvious: the more data in OSM, the better the Sputnik maps, and the more people make changes to OSM, the sooner our maps will become better. Therefore, we went to the people and arranged various events.


Cart meeting at ENEA. Summer 2015

- And How? Happened?

- On four with a minus. Developing a community is always difficult. For a year and a half, we held a couple of dozen meetings, on average from 5 to 20 people. Often these were those who had long been in the community and did a lot of things for him. Moreover, they gladly trained newcomers, of whom there were not so many. We not only gathered in the office, but also went out into the fields — we drew Moscow forests and parks in detail: we marked paths, benches, monuments and much more on the map.


Soligalich. Kostroma region. Before carrying out the cartography


Soligalich. Kostroma region. After the kartoaction

- Why do you think it’s not?

- This is just a camera format. Do you know how many people came to such meetings of “People’s Yandex.Maps”? As much as to us. There are not so many fans of cartography and open data even in Moscow, and even fewer people who are willing to spend their free time drawing a map. In addition, it seems to me that 15-20 people are the most comfortable amount for such events. More is not necessary.


Field mapping in Soligalich

- Why is the Sputnik map no longer updated?

- A couple of years ago the old team left and now there is simply no one to do it. Probably, it seems to me, it would be easier and more logical to close this card service, but it is still used on the internal sites of Rostelecom, as well as a number of customers. Therefore, apparently, no one wanted to take responsibility for the closure of this project, they decided to leave everything as it is. Still configured and working? There are no requests.

By the way, the last time the Sputnik map was updated a year ago. A funny story is connected with this. We can say that for people from the old team it was a good deed. The owners of the service asked to update the map in connection with one event - the opening of the Crimean bridge. Obviously, the bridge is geopolitically important and it was very necessary that it be on the map.


Farewell party of the Sputnik card service team

- When you developed a map service for Sputnik, how did you see it in the future? What did they strive for?

- You know, we initially had no relation to it as a product. Although we, of course, wanted to compete with other similar services. Rather, it was a fan and RND , because we had the opportunity to do this.

We dreamed that we would make a cool card, which would eventually become a universal backing for all state bodies of the country. But this did not happen, because there has always been duality and understatement in our work. On the one hand, you make a cool story: you dig into the data, put it in order, develop new algorithms and functions, but in fact you do not make a product that is designed for the mass market. We did not understand who and how it would use in the end. In addition, you are trying to push this whole story into a large clumsy state-owned company so that this card becomes the property of the masses. As you can see, our attempts have led little to anything.

But, I think that we made a decent map. No matter how arrogant it may sound, but in a number of moments we were the first. For example, let’s say, all map services a layer with a POI simply displayed on top of the substrate. The result was an unreadable mess from a bunch of icons that often overlapped each other. We decided then to get away from this and organically integrate the POI into the card itself. We succeeded and we gradually began to carefully display more and more POIs on the map: first the sights, then the cultural institutions, etc. This is now almost done for everyone, and then we were the first.

We have the first appeared zoom 19 scale. This is a very detailed level at which you can show trees, benches, speed bumps, traffic lights, etc. For a while it was only with us. We experimented a lot and also successfully.

- What did you learn from working at Sputnik?

- To the fact that you need to immediately understand on the shore what your product is, who its consumer is. And already from this all development should be built. It is always necessary to keep in mind the ultimate goal and not to forget it - why this product is made.

- What would you say to those who doubt: to use OSM data or not?

- If you do not know where to get the data, then take it from OSM and make cool maps, projects and services. The data is open and they are of quite good quality. I travel a lot and navigate everywhere with the help of one mobile navigation application, I won’t say which one, everyone knows it, but it uses OSM data. I just have enough, often come across interesting things that you will never meet on Google maps.

OSM is such a unique project that no alternative has yet appeared. Despite the fact that it has already passed the peak of its development and it has many internal problems associated with the data format, it is afloat and does not cease to be a popular data source. Yes, there are certain difficulties when you take this data and try to make candy out of it. Nevertheless, many succeed. Therefore, it is safe to take data from OSM and work with them.

- Now make changes to OSM?

“Yes, but I only note coffee houses.” I do this through a mobile application. Editors themselves do not open. I don’t have time for anything more.

- Why coffee houses?

- I love coffee and travel. If the next trip ends up in some place that is not on the map, then I add it there.


The full final composition of the Sputnik card-service team, 2017

- Maybe you have some interesting story related to OSM?

- There were an incredible amount, but I will tell the most ridiculous. In OSM, in addition to the ODbL license , there are a bunch of written and unwritten rules. Generally, getting into this world, you can easily accidentally run into an underwater mine that you did not know about.

When we just started working on a map for Sputnik, we found out that OSM does not have some important information for us, namely, the names of settlements around the world in Russian. At first we tried to make it by hand. We realized that it would take too much time. Then we began to make massive edits that concerned the whole world. This did not go unnoticed. We could not even think that our import could cause someone trouble and cause a headache. We were immediately written by one person from a working group according to the OSM Foundation, which is engaged in rollbacks of unlicensed edits and ban vandals, saying that you are doing this, slow down your activity, where did you get the data from. Well, we literally took his words, thought that it’s impossible to make such large packages of edits. The next day, one of our developers made a network of bots,which these data began to upload in OSM in small portions. But this also caused community outrage. We did not understand - why? We have a noble goal, we found a cool dataset, prepared it, started loading it into OSM, it seems everyone should be happy. What's wrong?

After a while, we realized our mistake and the motivation of the people who impeded our “noble” impulse. They simply have already “eaten up” such episodes when people load tons of dubious content from the point of view of a license into OSM, which they then have to “clean up” from there, because it can jeopardize the entire project.

It was a great experience. He allowed me to understand that map and data are a fragile living organism, into which one cannot force something into the force without the knowledge of the community. Everything needs to be approached carefully and be prepared for the fact that you will find many pitfalls along the way.

- What would you say at the end of the conversation?

- I really want the Russian authorities to take an example from those countries where the government is not afraid to share data with its citizens and puts it in the public domain. This allows a huge number of projects to appear, including cartographic ones. Unfortunately, while our officials think differently - they try to make money on information. This all gives rise to semi-legal schemes. On the one hand, there is a mess, and on the other, there are many guards who are afraid that it would not work out, and therefore inhibit all progress.

I am very impressed by the example of Estonia, where all cadastral data and incredible quality aerial photography are freely available. I don’t even know what scale it is, but it shows that a man has a hose in his backyard. And now this data is available to absolutely anyone and no one has died. So you can live like that?

PS We sincerely hope that the current team of Sputnik, after reading this text, will update its wonderful map. True, she is very good, and so I want this project to live on and be always relevant.

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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.

→ Join OSM!

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Previous interview: Georgy Potapov , Vladimir Marshinin , Eugene Usvitsky , wowik , SviMik , Kirill Bondarenko , Artem Svetlov , Sergei Sinitsyn , Natalia Kozlovsky , Viktor Vyalichkin , Ivan BANO.notIT aka , Anton Belichkov , Elena Balashova , Ilya Zverev , Timothy Subbotin , Sergei Golubev .

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/undefined/