How about organizing some mapping party?
Sounds nice.
But where?
We could start in a central town, which is in miserable state, like: Petah Tikva, Holon, Bat Yam, Ramat HaSharon, Kfar Sava, Hod HaSharon, etc.
And… Is this a good thread to remind everybody to add “name:en” to all named entities?..
A couple of weeks ago i went to Ness Ziona to give a look to decide if looking there to buy a house… the map it’s pretty empty and the town is not so big.
Rishon LeZion too is far to be completed and in a 2-3 evenings we could complete the street grid.
I’ve lately been neglecting my name:en tags, so thanks for the reminder 
What equipment is required for a mapping party? Does everyone need to have car/bike etc.? Printed osm maps? Regular maps (in case we get lost…)
I know… 
I’ve fixed them all lately, so we should be ok. Untill the next time someone adds streets in Netanya/Hofit/Or-Akiva, or Haifa…
Everyone should have a GPS.
I guess someone with a car could do long streets, and main roads,
someone with a bike can cover a big neighborhood,
and someone on foot can cover a small area, or a park, or something.
People with cars could drop-off those on foot in their designated area, and collect them after they’re done, and drop them off in another place.
I believe less than 10 people can cover the whole of Petah Tikva (or similar) in one long Friday/Saturday morning (say, 08:00-12:30)
When kids are at school, and there’s less traffic.
I would have suggested Saturday, but I’m guessing not everyone drive/ride on that day…
A smaller place (e.g. Ramat HaSharon) would require less people, or less time.
I don’t believe having a pre-printed map of the area breaks the OSM rules.
2 peoples in a car can drive the streets to take note of the streetnames… the driver slow down (or stop) at crossings and the other should take pictures (low-res) of the street signs (speed limits, turn restrictions too).
1 people by bike/scooter could made the same for post box, public offices, telephone boots, big shops
walking people could take photos for gardens names, small shops…
The ideal way to manage a party is a mix of people by car/bike/walk
Having a commercial map to split the areas is a cake map is perfect. The drivers could, as suggested, drop walking people in the middle of “shops polupated area” and then recollect’em
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/LiverpoolMappingParty_June09#Cake
Should be to have a pub (or elesewhere) where go after the in-field work, to collect, edit and upload the datas.
I would prefer to map in the evenings, firstly because i’m shomer shabbat, and secondly because of the heat of the morning sun… while you are in a care is easy to have air conditioner, but mapping by bike or walking could be very heavy.
In Italy we usualy have mapping parties on sunday, but here we cannot…
Let me know
OK, I like the idea, and I want to take part in a mapping party.
I have a GPS logger, and a digital camera.
No car, no bike.
I can seat beside a car driver, or walk. Walking is fine.
Transportation is a problem for me on weekends. Therefore, Friday morning is the best for me. I’ll most likely also participate in other times, if its not too far, or if someone could drive me there.
Hi!
I’d be glad to help mapping like this.
Tell me when you’re going :).
Also mail me at: yaadetgar@hotmail.com, because I don’t always looks at this board…
Yaad
Sooo,
when and where will be the mapping party ?
Good question! 
In these days i’m moving to my new house in Netanya.
Netanya is yet well mapped but lacks a lot of POI!
If womeone would like to join me to map the amenities of the city, i will start to do it in a couple of weeks.
Edoardo
Hey Edoardo,
as my homeplanet is Netanya there will not be so much to do for you here in terms of streets.
Problematic are streetnames, housenumbering and as you said POI of course 
If you need help in a area in or around Netanya.
Tell me.
While POIs are nice to have, I suggest that streets are a must.
Only if we have a good coverage of streets, then we could hopefully get more people to contribute.
As long as the main cities aren’t mapped, there’s no hope for the mass to join this project.
Looking back at an older post of mine,
I suggest Ramat Hasharon first, as it’s poorly mapped, and is pretty central.
Next might be Holon, or Bat Yam, or Hod HaSharon.
Recently I started mapping Petah Tikva little by little.
I don’t believe I could cover all of it, but it’s already in a better state than before.
Since some of the people here don’t map on a Saturday, and Friday might not be convenient for everybody,
how about an evening on a weekday?
Say, start around 19:00, and meet up again at 22:00 or something.
Ramat HaSharon can be easily divided into 6 areas, each can be covered in less than 3 hours.
The areas: Kiryat Yearim, Alon, Neve Rom, Hadar, Neve Magen, Morasha.
Someone on a bike can cover 2 areas in 3 hours.
A pedestrian can cover a little less than one area in 3 hours,
but they can map footways and gardens and parks, and be backed up with someone in a car for the streets.
So the two can cover more than an area in 3 hours.
All that’s left is to decide the day of week, and whether we want it in early November, or late November
talkat.
I support talkat’s suggestion. Ramat Hasharon is a great idea, 19:00…22:00 is fine in the middle of the week, and November is a great month 
How about second week of November?
I’d prefer not to have the party on Sundays or Wednesdays, but I’ll come anyway.
Regarding the - let’s say - medium term goal, I’m not sure I agree that mapping more streets is more important than mapping other features, especially house number information.
The way to go, I think, is too map small areas very well. Major nearby cities, having most of Gush Dan mapped would be g-r-e-a-t. Have at least something, that is TRULY usable, say Tel-Aviv-Jafo, Netanya etc., that you can do anything that is possible with walla maps, freemap, etc with our data. For this, house numbers and all the car related routing data is crucial. Then possibly focus, in those same small areas, on providing stuff that the our main competitors doesn’t have: bus routes, foot vs car navigation, shortest vs fastest navigation, walking trails, Fancier maps, more map data (parks, lanes, POI, cycle maps, walking maps; ski maps can be rendered very fast for Israel…).
This has two benefits: for us, we have at least some properly usable data. for others, they can see the potential AND some of the users of - say waze - may consider us as an alternative for the mapped areas. In the same way, some of the users of walla maps may consider an osm based web site as a better alternative if they mostly care about mapped cities.
To summarize, I say, prefer being useful as soon as possible in small areas, to spreading the effort evenly on larger areas and not being useful for a much longer period.
Hi!
I’d be glad to come to those ‘parties’, as I said.
Meanwhile, I will start a miluim next monday, and I’m studying from sunday to wednesday.
For me thursday will be great, and if you’ll hurry, we can meet to map even this week before the miluim.
I love to map and I did a lot of stuff here from my area, but it starts to be boring without more people with me!
Yaad
The idea of doing the mapping in weekdays is great.
Tell me when and I will try to join.
We need as much as possible public attention for this project in Israel.
To get this we should publish the mapping party on following two sites:
http://community.cloudmade.com/event
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Current_events
And because we need more attendees in OSM for Israel we should also write an article about the first mapping party with a before / after screenshot of the map.
It would be mandatory to have a Hebrew and English written summary of the mapping event that can be sent to several Hebrew news sites and may be published on the OSM News blog.
PUBLIC RELATION IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE STREETS OR DETAIL LEVEL OF THE MAP!
Ok, how about this?
Monday 9/Nov, 19:00, at the parking lot of the town hall of Ramat HaSharon
We’ll divide the town into 6 areas:
Kiryat Yearim, Alon, Neve Rom, Hadar, Neve Magen, Morasha.
The minimum of participants is 3, which might not cover the whole town.
5 or 6 participants and we can cover it all.
Please suggest whether you plan to come, and whether you’ll be with a car, a bike, or pedestrian.
This will help divide the work in advance, and get ready (e.g. pair car and pedestrian, etc.)
I will come with a bike.
talkat.