Why this note shows up as "unknown"? (not from deleted user)

Help and support
1

contents from note dump: {'@id': '5396638', '@lat': '38.5505133', '@lon': '44.9602067', '@created_at': '2026-07-15T00:36:54Z', 'comment': {'@action': 'opened', '@timestamp': '2026-07-15T00:36:54Z', '@uid': '24312952', '@user': 'فرش ماهی خلیلی', '#text': 'فرش ماهی خلیلی پااک48\nIran khoy Taleghani street'}}

contents from API: https://api.openstreetmap.org/api/0.6/notes/5396638.json

{
  "type": "Feature",
  "geometry": {
    "type": "Point",
    "coordinates": [
      44.9602067,
      38.5505133
    ]
  },
  "properties": {
    "id": 5396638,
    "url": "https://api.openstreetmap.org/api/0.6/notes/5396638.json",
    "comment_url": "https://api.openstreetmap.org/api/0.6/notes/5396638/comment.json",
    "close_url": "https://api.openstreetmap.org/api/0.6/notes/5396638/close.json",
    "date_created": "2026-07-15 00:36:54 UTC",
    "status": "open",
    "comments": []
  }
}

note that comment is unavailable.

What happened here?

User is not deleted, note is not hidden, it is not new (I waited for a new note dump) so it is not recent deletion by sysadmins…

2

This question is probably more suited for Issues · openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website · GitHub

3

I am planning to report it there if there is nothing obvious to explain it

4

Are you sure? https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/فرش%20ماهی%20خلیلی

5

I am confused why they still appear as author on Note: 5396638 | OpenStreetMap then - usually notes from deleted authors are deleted and their usernames are deleted on their notes.

In this case uid 24312952 was also missing from https://planet.openstreetmap.org/users_deleted/users_deleted.txt

and I just checked, it is still missing

6

I had a look at the code. The impression I get is that this happens when the text of a note (but not the note itself) has been marked as hidden.

Technical explanation follows:

Notes are modelled internally in a strange way, where the text of the note is stored in the app as a comment. So the first comment in a note is actually the text of the note, the stored second comment is shown on the website as the first comment, etc. Therefore it’s possible to hide the text of a note as if it were a comment, without hiding the note itself.

What appears to have happened here is that the first comment has been marked hidden. Moderators (DWG members) should be able to see it, but the rest of use will see “unknown”. In the code this is handled at openstreetmap-website/app/helpers/note_helper.rb at master · openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website · GitHub, and was introduced at Displays "unknown" description for notes with missing opening comment by nenad-vujicic · Pull Request #5712 · openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website · GitHub

7

is there any way to detect it based on note dumps?

such notes are confusing and pointless (I closed mentioned one) but to detect it I would need to make API call for each existing note which is a terrible idea

is it bug that text is not hidden in note dump?

8

I can’t be sure as I don’t know how the dump works, but it sounds like a bug in the dump to me. In the sense that, if it’s hidden on the website, it probably should not show up in the dump either.

I don’t know what the dump looks like either, I only have the example you posted initially, and from there I can’t see how this could be detected. There’s a visible key that I think must be false in the affected comment. The shared JSON doesn’t have this key in your example, so I guess it’s assumed that any comments in the dump are always visible as otherwise they would not appear in the dump. This again points at a bug.

9

I put on my TODO list investigating how exactly it looks in dump file and making issue based on that

my TODO list is hilariously long and it is not a priority item on entertainment sublist so feel free to make own report if anyone wants… And ideally mention it here