How to view the change history of a way element?

General talk
1

For example, how can I view the history of this way element?

https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/32359106

In the web editor it says:

Straßenkreuzung detailliert
Edited 2 months ago by kjon
Version #12 · Changeset #66341022

When I click on “Changeset: 66341022” I land here:

https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/66341022

but that doesn’t tell me what happend to way/32359106

I was expecting to see the way before and the way after, a kind of table view or diff message. Instead it seems that it just lists the objects that were changed. How do you investigate differences in change sets?

2

Scroll down on the page https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/32359106. There is a link with something like “show history” (in German Zeige Chronik" which points to https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/32359106/history
So, you can see the history by adding /history to the first link.

3

follow up question: what is the life-time of osm ids? say for example https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/32359106 under which circumstances is the id kept / changed to a new one?

4

Usual cases:
Someone splits the way - one retains ID, the other is assigned new ID

Someone deletes the way, then another person independently re-draws the way, possibly with slightly different geometry - new ID

Someone deletes the way, then another person reverts that changeset - same ID

Unusual cases (needs some work to pull off and somebody will probably notice it anyway):

Someone deletes the way, draws something in that place, but undeletes the original while placing it in another part of the world - still same ID on the original, but it’s placed elsewhere in the world

Conclusion: OSM IDs are not stable references and make sense only internally within OSM.

A useful read: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Good_practice#Keep_the_history

5

If you like to See changes visually you should have a look at some tools like:

6

Be advised that a new version of a way is only created if the set of nodes changes (node added to or deleted from the way) or if the tags change. If merely nodes are moved the version of the way stays the same. Thus, if you want to find out if a way moved you also have to check the versions of its nodes.

There is a helpful tool augmentedly showing you the changes in one changeset including tag changes and movements: https://overpass-api.de/achavi/?changeset=nnn where nnn is the changeset id.

7

Interesting and good to know, thanks.

Interesting, thanks!

I will take a look, thank you.

Interesting, thank you!