I’m a Wikipedian: I write, translate, and improve Wikipedia articles in Hebrew, English, Russian, and Catalan. Sometimes it’s a typo fix, and sometimes it’s whole new article about a poet from my country. Every time I do something on Wikipedia, I know that other people will read it and learn something useful. I’ve been doing this for fifteen years, and it doesn’t tire me.
Since I discovered that I can contribute to Google Maps similarly to how I contribute to Wikipedia, I’ve been doing it almost daily. I do anything that can be useful to people: I add new businesses, I correct their names or translations, I add photos and reviews. My city, Jerusalem, welcomes millions of tourists. When I improve the map I think about both the tourists, for whom relevant and correct information in a language they understand is always essential, and I also think about the residents because even as a local I don’t know everything about every single shop and restaurant in my city.
In particular, translation of businesses are often incorrect or completely missing, and since I live in a country where most names of places are written in the Hebrew alphabet, which most tourists cannot read, it’s crucial that an English name will be in the system and that it will be correct, readable, and easy to find.
Whenever I travel to other countries, I keep thinking about the hard-working people who update information about cafes, hotels, shops, and train stations in Google Map. Every edit makes travel for me and my family easier and more enjoyable in ways that just twenty years we could hardly even imagine, and when I’m home in my city, I try to do the same for people who come to visit it.