OSMCha

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OSMCha
OSMCha Interface Example v0.78.1.png
Author: Wille Marcel and others (mapbox/osmcha-frontend/graphs/contributors)
License: ISC License
Platform: Web
Status: Active
Version: 0.86 releases (2023-09-12)
Website: osmcha.org
Source code: mapbox/osmcha-frontend, willemarcel/osmcha-django

OSM Changeset review tool

OSMCha short for OpenStreetMap Changeset Analyzer is a web tool to help mappers analyze and review data changes to OSM. The objective of the tool is to help detect vandalism and act on bad changes to the map data.

History

OSMCha was originally written by Wille Marcel in 2015 to investigate suspicious changesets on OSM. A global instance was later hosted by Mapbox as an additional data QA tool for the OSM community.[1] In 2023, it became a charter project of OpenStreetMap U.S.[2]

Features

Changeset Explorer

OSMCha is an advanced changeset explorer. Changesets on OpenStreetMap have timestamp, editor used, changeset comment, bounding box of the changeset, username of the author and other metadata . OSMCha stores these changeset metadata and allows searching through them.

Filters

The user interface of OSMCha allows multiple user input of metadata values for searching through the changeset database. This includes various characteristics of the changeset and also auto-detection of suspicious edits.

These values can be saved to be used later. You can make an RSS feed from a saved filter, by following Mannivu's guide. The RSS will be updated when new activity matches the filter.

Known issues

There are issues with user interface in displaying area of interest filters (polygon/bounding box) which hinder new users, while the filters work well once set.[3] [4] [5]

Using OSMCha

Using OSMCha API

OSMCha review data is available through API. A website is also available for interactively exploring API.[6] Please follow the instructions below.

  1. Try Social-auth API post call with empty data in oauthheader values. You will recieve oauth_token, oauth_token_secret as response.
  2. Use the url https://www.openstreetmap.org/oauth/authorize?oauth_token=<oauth_token received in the previous step> in the browser to login to OSM and provide permissions
  3. The browser url redirects to https://osmcha.org/oauth-landing.html?oauth_token=<oauth_token>&oauth_verifier=<oauth_verifier>
  4. Try Social-auth API post call again by filling in oauthheader with all the values received so far, including oauth_verifier received in the earlier step. Now you will receive a response called "token": <value>
  5. Use token value prefixed with "Token " (note the space character after the word Token) as your OSMCha API access token and authorize by clicking on the Authorize button. Store the token in a confidential storage area, so that you can start with step 5 for additonal sessions after you close the present session.
  6. Now you can try out any API on the page, by filling necessary inputs.

Useful browser extensions

JumpToOSMChangesetAnalyzer

Jump to OSM Changeset Analyzer is a browser extension to switch to OSMCha and other tools.[7]

OSM Smart Menu

OSM Smart Menu is a browser extension to open OSMCha and several other OSM utilities when browsing OpenStreetMap.org.

See also

References

External links