[OSM-talk] New API suggestion: Allowing contributors to easily track their OSM-objects over time

[Martin Koppenhoefer]

sent from a phone

> On 23. Aug 2020, at 13:40, pangoSE <pangose at riseup.net> wrote:
> 
> The permid then no longer represents a shop but the
> location of a space where a shop could and now does exist. Someone
> making a service cataloguing all shopspaces for hire in a city could
> then link to this shopspace FWIW.


it really depends what you believe the permID represents, i.e. your usecase. Someone might be interested in the builtup space of the shop, another one on the business operated by this operator and yet another one in businesses selling men‘s wear or selling clothing of selling products in general. 
According to this interest, the permanent ID would either have to be kept, or marked as „closed“ or „sold“ and a new one created, etc. Neither the API nor the mapper who maps the update can know what action they should perform wrt the permanent ID because it is only clear within the context of those who use the ID, not within the map data itself.

There is a concept for permanent IDs with overpass API, are you aware of it?

I believe this is nothing that the main API must provide, it can be a third party offering.

Generally, all the OpenStreetMap history is recorded and available, so you can already track those events which are interesting to you.

Cheers Martin