What is the difference between commentedbyUser and watcher fields in Jira

[Maciej Solinski]

I am trying to get some data from Jira, but can't understand the different as mentioned in Question above.

Example of query: 

created >= 2021-01-01 AND created <= 2022-02-22 and watcher in ("userA", "userB", "userC")

created >= 2021-01-01 AND created <= 2022-02-22 AND issue in commentedByUser("userA", "userB", "userC")

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

• Watchers are people who add themselves to a watch list for the issue (or someone adds them).
• Commentedby looks at who has made comments on the issue.

A watcher does not have to have made a comment to be a watcher, and a commenter does not have to be a watcher

The two searches are looking for people for different reasons.

[Maciej Solinski]

Commentedby looks only at who has made comments on the issue or also at someone who for eg. has been assigned for a moment to the task and didn't make any comment (exist in the task history log)?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Yes, it really is just the comment's existence.  Other actions don't make you a commenter!

If you have someone who has been assigned to the issue, edited it and transitioned it, but not made a comment (either by hitting comment or by adding one while editing/assigning/transitioning etc), then they will not be counted as a commenter.

[Maciej Solinski]

Thank you very much for answers.. I have last question: how to generate list of Jira issues for someone, who ever "touched" the issue: either has commented, or was watcher, or has been assigned, or was reporter, etc... exist in history log somehow.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

You have to report on the various different actions differently, and there's no record of just "updated".  You can look for individuals "was updated by (Bob Smith)" for example.

But yes, all record of change is stamped with the author and that is indeed all logged in the issue history.