Hi all,
I propose a new project: Mapping the Official Administrative Boundaries.
Now that we got this MOIN import, it would be nice if we could get this done quickly, to prove the power of our community.
talkat.
I propose the following plan:
- Set up a wiki page with instructions
- There, make a list (table) of all the units (optionally divided by districts and sub-districts) - hebrew wikipedia has a pretty good list of all regional councils/local councils/cities in each district. The table will have a column for the resulting boundary relation.
- Put up an announcement on the main OSM site (project of the week??).
dimka
P.S. Personally I may be a little busy in the coming couple of days though.
No need for a special page.
The main (Project Israel) page is good enough for now.
I will create a list that creates a wiki page, like the ones we have for the places and the trails.
Hopefully, Mr_Israel, who likes statistics, will join the effort… 
It would be nice to have a list of all councils.
Can we get that from MOIN as well?
Just a list of all councils that are in that import.
That could be helpful, on the top of the page.
talkat.
regarding the point 3) I’m already in contact with the main blogs.
Also created a post in the member OSM blog: http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Mr_Israel/diary/12805 (Please see the great feedback!)
BTW: Can you please post or send me the original statement from MOIN that you got per email so we can include that in the publishing?
We should at least have the instructions for tagging the boundary relations put up.
I’ve asked them for such a list. I believe that we can have this already now from the Central Statistics Bureau.
This file has a list of all municipalities+local councils.
This file has all the regional councils (sheet 3)
All of the above are updated to 2009, so there might still be differences.
By the way, here is the CBS list of all places in Israel, you can have your script to do a cross-check 
dimka
I’ve forwarded you the email.
Also, we should somehow acknowledge the MOIN contribution. Seems to me appropriate to add them to the following pages:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Contributors
and maybe also here (might still be premature though)
http://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright
dimka
Here you go. Thanks to MOIN.
I guess that the number of appearances of a name equals the number of closed polygons bounding the authority’s area.
As a standard, should we add the designation “regional council”/“local council”/“municipality” to the name of an authority?
Maybe just for Regional Councils?
dimka
Yes, that’s what I’ve been practicing.
Example 1
he: Moaza Ezorit Tamar
en: Tamar Regional Council
Exmplae 2
he: Even Yehuda
en: Even Yehuda
talkat.
Gentlemen, start your engines! 
I already have the script that creates the wiki list pages, and I’ll post them later today.
talkat.
Here’s a trick that might make things faster:
When you trace a new section, in most cases it belongs to 2 different municipalities.
So don’t just add it to one, add it to both.
Create the other municipality if it’s not there already.
talkat.
Can you guys provide any kind of status of the importing?
I have added some boundaries in the north of Gaza. But there is no relation created for that area.
For me its almost impossible to get through that lists and find the correct information. So I hope I can help a little bit in adding just the boundaries?
Your new ways in the south are already incorporated into relations
I was thinking about the problem of knowing when a relation is done.
Maybe we could add a tag in the relation or something?
Most of the relations in the south aer already done, and we’re up to the Yoav/Gderot area.
Adding the boundaries is very helpful.
I could also run a script to see which admin_level=8 ways are not part of any relation, which could help find them all.
One issue I noticed:
Whenever there’s an intersection of boundaries - Stop and start a new way.
The boundary lines should be the smallest possible, between 2 interections.
talkat.
Nice example of our progress: Bnei Shimon Regional Council.
Official map, compare with our relation.
I like it.
talkat.
Thumbs up!
User adrukh has pointed to me that administrative relations names are rendered.
This might not always be nice on the eyes…
We’ve had a similar case before, with places.
There we solved it using the standard way, of using the place_name tag.
Should we use a similar solution here?
e.g. boundary_name or something similar?
Thoughts? Ideas?
talkat.
I actually find it quite useful to have the boundaries labelled on the map. True, the name of an authority is also rendered inside the area itself, and it is not always nice. But, is seems to happen only with Mapnik.
To conclude, I believe that in this case we should stick to the standard.
dimka
The main question is : do we really need the Council name on top of citynames?
I think we don’t have to make the map look like this:
http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=31.228&lon=34.8836&zoom=14&layers=M&relation=1376824
Its enough to have those information in the map and rendered only on the boundary track itself. And of course in the search results.
But no need to confuse people on rendered maps with that information.
Don’t understand me wrong. Of course we need this information, but think of the normal user of a normal map of Israel.
Do they really have to see this information that way? Is that information that important for a normal user?
Question is, what is a “normal user”?
So, you agree that the name should be rendered on the boundary way itself? If so, the only way to have this AND not to have double names is to adapt the default Mapnik stylesheet to our needs.
You realize that this problem is not unique to Israel, and in all the places I’ve seen the boundary relation on all levels always has a name tag. We should have a really good reason to not follow the standard.
My thoughts:
I believe that OSM is not the slippy map! Nor it is any renderable (Mapnik/Osmarender/BikeHike/OpenPiste/etc.) map.
OSM is the data.
The various maps and renders are only a “use of the data”.
Therefore, I say that we should keep to the standards.
If we look closely at Relation:boundary, there’s a “label” role for a member.
Maybe this would “fix” Mapnik’s double rendering of the name?
The “problem” is there aren’t enough nodes…
It’s ok in a town or city: The place node should have the “label” role, and its municipality node should have the “admin_centre” role.
But in regional councils there aren’t enough nodes.
There’s the regional municipality node (e.g. Menashe Regional Council), which should be used as the admin_centre,
But which node should have the “label” role? I propose we add a node just for the label, with no tags, maybe just the “note” tag.
And hopefully Mapnik would support this, but if not, then “we have a case” to open a bug to in Mapnik.
talkat.