Modify tags on changeset

[openstreetmap-trac]

Reporter: NicolasDumoulin
[Submitted to the original trac issue database at 3.46pm, Tuesday, 27th September 2011]

It could be usefull to give the ability to modify the tags on an existing changeset.
It's Okay that committed data can be modified, but modifying the tags itself doesn't seem to be a problem for the consistanceness.

Why? For example, if I forget the "source" tag when committing from JOSM, I can't then fix it. So this changeset will not have "source" tag, this is bad.
An other usage will be to fix the comment or whatever your want in these metadata.

[openstreetmap-trac]

Author: TomH
[Added to the original trac issue at 1.53pm, Wednesday, 28th September 2011]

The API has supported this ever since changesets were introduced - just PUT a new changeset definition with the updated tags to /api/0.6/changeset/NNN and the tags will be updated.

[openstreetmap-trac]

Author: JoshD
[Added to the original trac issue at 3.53pm, Wednesday, 28th September 2011]

I think it would have been useful to include more non-technical information for the OP (and others) before closing this ticket. I have had situations where it would have been useful to change the changeset tags, especially source tags. From my understanding, you can only modify a changeset while it is still open. JOSM by default closes changesets when you upload them, but you can turn that off. However changesets will automatically close after 1 hour unless you continue uploading additions to the changeset which will reset the clock, however all changesets will be permanently closed within 24 hours at most.

[http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/API_v0.6#Update:PUT.2Fapi.2F0.6.2Fchangeset.2F.23id API v0.6 Update: PUT /api/0.6/changeset/#id]

[http://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?id=7365 Can I edit a changeset comment?]

[http://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?id=13356 Changing the comment on a closed changeset?]

I would say there is still a valid need to add/change tags on changesets after they've been closed. However we shouldn't just overwrite the original closed changeset. Others have suggested we allow comments to be added on changesets, so this would be one option to let others know about updated source information. Perhaps comments themselves could permit arbitrary tags, so that data consumers can programmatically use the newer source/source:url/etc tags.

[openstreetmap-trac]

Author: TomH
[Added to the original trac issue at 4.34pm, Wednesday, 28th September 2011]

The person raising the ticket appeared reasonably technical - after all they came straight here and asked for an API change rather than requesting a UI change in an editor. So I gave a technical response.

If you have concrete enhancement suggestions then they belong on separate tickets, not polluting this one with only marginally related commentary - this is a bug/enhancement tracker not a discussion forum.