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I want to see who has edited in my area recently, and what they've changed. How can I do that?

asked 06 Jul '10, 17:43

randomjunk's gravatar image

randomjunk
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closed 05 Apr '16, 10:17

SimonPoole's gravatar image

SimonPoole ♦
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meta @SimonPoole: closing a question does not help in any way to make its answers more current - to the contrary. Reopened. Yes, old questions and answers for still current topics are a problem, but we don't solve it by closing. Let's discuss over there.

(05 Apr '16, 20:26) aseerel4c26 ♦

You can find a list of services to see what has been changed or added to the data for a certain area at http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Change_monitoring

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answered 11 Aug '10, 16:47

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edited 15 Sep '10, 19:06

4

Older tools vanish, new tools come, it may be best to just explore this list. Currently I often use Whodidit.

(04 Apr '16, 19:53) aseerel4c26 ♦

As a moderator here I've moved the "answer" to here as the previous answer, while valid at the time, was really of historical interest.

(22 Nov '20, 11:49) SomeoneElse ♦
27

[This answer is of historic interest only]

There are a few different ways to see the who has been editing in your area recently.

The first method is to use the "History" tab on the OpenStreetMap website. Zoom into the area that you're interested in and click the "History" tab. This will show you all the changesets that have covered your area. The problem is that some changesets cover a huge area and so aren't relevant.

The second method is to try the OSM Watch List (OWL) at http://matt.dev.openstreetmap.org/owl_viewer/ (Note: is there any documentation for how to use this?). You can use this to get an RSS/ATOM feed for areas that you are interested in, and it updates every minute so you can see changes straight away.

Third, there is a tool from ITO World called OSM Mapper. If you sign up to it you can see maps of the areas, and do things like colour-code by how recently it changed or by who worked in that area. It only covers ways though, not nodes or relation changes.

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answered 06 Jul '10, 17:53

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edited 05 Apr '16, 10:22

SimonPoole's gravatar image

SimonPoole ♦
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The History tab would be much more useful if it had a tick box to limit it to local changesets, or at least just hide the "(big)" changesets. As it is now it is pretty much useless.

(13 Jul '10, 13:13) GrahamS
1

The plan is to use OWL to drive the history tab so that it does only show changesets which really change that area.

(14 Jul '10, 14:39) TomH ♦♦

"Hide the '(big)' changesets suggestion" comes up a lot GrahamS. This question specifically talks about it: http://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/3983/how-do-you-display-only-local-edits-in-the-changelog/3985 My answer is kind of duplicate of this one here though...

But incidentally Andy could add a new option to his answer here: "ITO Map" is from the same company as "OSM Mapper" but different: http://www.itoworld.com/product/data/ito_map/ It has the option to show 'recent edits in the past 7 days' or 90 days on a normal worldwide slippy map, to get a simple overview of recent activity.

(29 Feb '12, 00:59) Harry Wood
3
(21 Aug '13, 11:31) Chaos99
1

… and in the meantime http://owl.openstreetmap.org/ does not work too.

(04 Apr '16, 19:30) aseerel4c26 ♦

the ITO Map is gone too

(11 Sep '17, 21:08) valeriethebl...
showing 5 of 6 show 1 more comments

If you see that a particular item has changed, you can also use Potlatch 1's 'History' function to find out who changed it and when. Open Potlatch 1 (hover over the 'edit' tab until a menu appears); select the way or point in question; and press 'H' for history (or click the ID in the bottom left). In the window that opens, you'll see a drop-down list of who edited it and when.

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answered 07 Jul '10, 10:00

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Richard ♦
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edited 29 Feb '12, 10:18

2

It's perhaps worth mentioning that Potlatch 1 is still available as an editor, even though it's not in the drop-down list - select "Potlatch 2" and remove the "2" from the URL.

(02 Jan '17, 16:39) SomeoneElse ♦

In JOSM you will use the history dialog : http://josm.openstreetmap.de/wiki/Help/Dialog/History - it displays those objects from the current selection for which a history of object versions can be retrieved from the OSM server. It is quite a comprehensive display

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This answer is marked "community wiki".

answered 10 Jul '10, 10:43

Jean_Marc%20Liotier's gravatar image

Jean_Marc Li...
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There are a lot of "quality assurance" tools linked on this page. So many in fact, that it's easy to get confused in them. Achavi or previously mentioned OSM History Viewer are good tools but doesn't fit the scope of this question IMO, as a lot of others, as they are tools to analyze single changesets.

If anyone finds this question, having looked for a tool that shows latest changes on the map to help seeing who has changed a certain area, I've found these the most helpful tools:

Last 3days/week/month on OSM - slow to load but I've found it the best in this context as it actually puts the changesets on the map without the need to click on individual tiles

WHODIDIT - the map is split into tiles and by clicking on a tile you can see latest changes in it. There are also edit age, changesest and user filtering options

Latest OpenStreetMap Edits per Tile - basically the same as whodidit but can only filter by edit age

OSMcha - Lots of filtering options. You don't see the map at first, but you can filter the area of your interest and time range and it will show a list of changesets in the sidebar. Awesome for individual evaluation of changesets but still has that "area" purpose that OP was asking for.

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answered 10 May '20, 12:42

ivss_xx's gravatar image

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This page allows you to see all the changes in an area for up to 30 days in the past: https://tyrasd.github.io/latest-changes

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answered 21 Nov '20, 11:09

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edited 22 Nov '20, 11:51

SomeoneElse's gravatar image

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Looking at the repository this tool has been around some time. Why have I never heard of it? I love it already. Thanks for the pointer.

(22 Nov '20, 22:04) TZorn

Something useful that helps visualise the changes in a changeset is the "OSM history viewer" over at openstreetmap.de.

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answered 23 Dec '13, 01:11

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-1

This tool (OSM Deep History) allows you to see a complete edit history for a specific feature https://osmlab.github.io/osm-deep-history/#/way/28158988.

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answered 26 May '22, 13:03

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question asked: 06 Jul '10, 17:43

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