Why do OSM and StreetComplete count "edits" differently?

[akilou]

In StreetComplete, I have over 1,100 edits (as indicated by stars in the upper-left). But in the OSM profile that I have connected to StreetComplete, it only list 300-some. When looking at the history in OSM, there are a lot of single edits, but often, it bundles a handful of edits together, sometimes up to 10. These changes can be over a huge area; I found one where 6 edits are spread across 50 miles or so.

Why is this?

[riQQ]

I think most of it should be explained in:

• Upload bulk of answer in a single changeset #21

[matkoniecz]

Note that your OSM profile page also has "????? contributions in the last year" which AFAIK counts each action separately (though obviously, only ones within last year).

SC stars are closer to that method.

[matkoniecz]

And OSM contributions can be counted in many ways, but either way thanks to anyone improving map!

BTW, https://hdyc.neis-one.org/ and other statistics run by Pascal may be of interest for stats enthusiasts. Though beware of Goodhart's law "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure" - for example Osmose often complain about perfectly fine tagging.

[mnalis]

In StreetComplete, I have over 1,100 edits (as indicated by stars in the upper-left). But in the OSM profile that I have connected to StreetComplete, it only list 300-some

They show different hings. Number of stars is the number of individual elements (i.e. nodes / ways / areas) that have been updated, while profile (i.e. www.openstreetmap.org webpage) shows number of changesets i.e. something that might be called "Editing session (for specific purpose¹)" .

Unless in each of your editing sessions have changed exactly one element (which is extremely unlikely), those numbers will differ (by a lot, usually).

Also note that StreetComplete "stars" only track your changes done via StreetComplete app -- i.e. if you draw hundreds of buildings using iD desktop web editor, it would of course update your www.openstreetmap.org "Edits" and https://hdyc.neis-one.org/; but it would have no effect on number of "stars" in StreetComplete.

Footnotes

1. E.g. if you go out and map only housenumbers for an hour, that is one editing session - but you likely would've updated dozens if not hundreds of elements (and thus earned dozens or hundreds of "stars"). ↩

[matkoniecz]

Number of stars if number of individual elements (i.e. nodes / ways / areas) that have been updated

to nitpick: as one element may changed multiple times (say building or bus stop) they actually count number how many times ways/nodes/relations were updated, with notes not being counted