At the moment, I try to add a few details to the map of Haifa. But from time to time, I encounter problems. So, I thought, we could discuss these problems before someone has to revert all my changes. Especially, since I am a foreigner and not used to the local habits.
a) Street names:
Sometimes, it seems as though the road signs are badly translated. Just to give an example (רח קומוי): http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=32.78081&lon=35.01361&zoom=17&layers=O
If I remember correctly, the translation on the road sign was not Komoi but Komol. But it is kind of obvious that Komoi would be the better choice (as is used in google maps). Is there a legal/official way to find out the correct street names?
b) The same applies to bus stations. First of all, the English translations of the bus stations are very strange sometimes. And they don’t match with the names of the bus stations that I found for example at www.egged.co.il Which scheme would you prefer for the bus station? The name on the sign at the bus station, egged, something else? www.egged.co.il even add the local house numbers to the name of the bus station. I guess that it is not really necessary.
c) Bus routes: Since the bus system is of great importance in Israel, I try to add the bus routes of Haifa according to [1]http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/Public_Transport . The first results can be seen with the help of http://dev.openstreetbrowser.org/ . I would suggest that we try to follow the scheme of [1]: Adding stop position, platform, and as a relation stop area. Since I am not very familiar with the different local bus networks, what are your suggestions for operator and network? I guess, operator would be Egged, … But the bus lines (for example 11) also exist in other towns in Israel. So, is there a network Egged-Haifa, … ? What would you suggest?
d) Street names in Arabic: I noticed that you try to avoid street, רחוב, … in the English/Hebrew street names. What about name:ar?
EDIT:
e) I noticed that some building belong to different streets (for example at corners). So I decided to add 2 separate entrances and tag the entrances with addr:* . Please correct me if you disagree. (see for example http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=32.77934&lon=35.01526&zoom=17&layers=O ).
first: Welcome to the OSM community! Great to see this kind of detailed work. amazing!
a) streetnames are always a problem in Israel. Every source in the web can use one translation but the sign at the road says something different.
You should provide OSM every detail you can find and use the most common name as name=abc and name:he=abc.
As the streetnames coming from a official recourse it could be a good cross reference.
b) I would say that the information on the sign of the bus station should be the main source for the naming. But you can add more names to the station to make sure that a search will also provide a correct result.
c) we have some bus lines in telaviv and other places in Israel. You should check how they define the routes. You should open a separated thread for the bus routes as I expect this can cause some discussion how to name and tag it.
d) as I dont know arabic I will not be able to check if you have the street added or not I expect that every arabic translation added is very welcome. OSM get work with a lot of data, no matter in what language.
e) In Israel is common to have entries and housenumber per street. So you will have the same building having two different housenumbers you should tag it exactly this way.
So a good tagging is done on this building. http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/98997301
I’m personally avoiding to define the whole building a housenumber. As this is missleading for navigation / routing.
Please see this example for a relation from the entries to the street itself. http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/4489231
This way you can make sure the housenumber is assigned the the correct road without having every housenumber node defined with the street and zipcode etc.
Ok, I will. Since this whole concept of public_transport is not yet finished, first, I have to read a little bit more about the options. Thanks for the reference.
My Arabic is also very limited, but it is enough for street and road. I also encountered the problem that some consonants like פּ are translated with an unknown letter. Maybe I will ask somewhere else where people are very familiar with Arabic. But thanks anyway.
Yes, of course. As soon as there are 2 separate house numbers, I tag the entrances separately. But it costs a lot of time to localize the entrances of every house. So maybe, I will start to add the house numbers to houses with a single number and later on move the house numbers step by step to entrance nodes. But thanks for the link. The relation is very useful. Also concerning another aspect that just crossed my mind:
For routes, I have to break down some streets from time to time.
-------------------- road A
|
|
| road B
to
road A — ========= road A
|
|
| road B
I guess this relation could be useful to “join” the streets again. But first, I have to read the reference to this kind of relation. It would be great if the name of the relation can replace the street name. [ EDIT: Oh, unfortunately, the answer is no. But this looks promising http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Relations/Proposed/Collected_Ways ]
Thanks again for your help. I really appreciate it.
Especially, since I am a foreigner and not used to the local habits. 
I also encountered the problem that some consonants like פּ are translated with an unknown letter. Maybe I will ask somewhere else where people are very familiar with Arabic. But thanks anyway.