[josm-dev] Commit message not empty

[Pieren]

On Thu, Apr 23, 2009 at 11:39 AM, Frederik Ramm > They will sooner or
later find out
> what this is about.
On Wikipedia, newbie sees what helpful comments are by looking in the
page history or the "recent changes" report which is one of the most
popular page on any Mediawiki project. It is the same here and I think
that's why the current OSM "Recent Changes" page will be very popular
as well (might be a bit longer in my opinion).

> And forcing them to enter *something* will make them think;

Someone who just wants to fix small issues on his local home area and
use an OSM editor one or two times in his live, may not want to think
and learn what the purpose of changeset comment is.

> Allowing them to simply hit enter will make
> them ignore the topic and forget about it.

Or make them: "Ok, they ask me for a comment. For this time, I may
have or haven't a comment. But why not for next time".
Just asking for comment is already making them thinking.

To finish, I will quote some sentences from our JOSM key developers:
Dirk Stöcker said:
"Nah. I'm against restrictions, but warnings are fine."

Frederik Ramm said (about wiki page smoothness):
"I have tried to understand what this is about but failed. Obviously
some guy named "ChrisCF" thinks he owns the place and writes things
like "I will not allow this and that" - an attitude that will surely
influence my own behaviour should I encounter him on the Wiki."


Pieren, the childish thinking like the Wikipedia admins about empty comments

btw, I also wrote a patch in ticket #2434 which allows empty comments,
following the API documentation.