[josm-dev] Change to changeset comment handling, RfD

[Frederik Ramm]

Ulf,

> Is it really your strategy to offend anyone not sharing your point of 
> view and build a community on top of that?

Please count the number of people who have participated in the 
discussion on talk, and see how many of them thought that changeset 
comments are important.

If I had the impression that this was just a personal itch of mine that 
nobody shared, I'd long since gone quiet.

Of course, even though a large majority of contributors think that 
changesets are important, you can still contribute to the project 
without doing what they'd like you to do.

The question here, on this mailing list, should be: What is the role of 
an editor in general, or JOSM in particular, in questions such as this?

There is absolutely no doubt that good changeset comments are helpful, 
useful, valuable. (I'll not argue about that, and nobody in their right 
mind would claim otherwise.) Of course there may be users who still 
choose not to enter such a comment, and perhaps I was unnecessarily 
polarising when I said they were selfish or "misbehaving"; there might 
be other reasons, e.g. they are very pressed for time, only making a 
tiny edit which they wouldn't have the time to make if they had to think 
of a sentence that describes it; or they might (mistakenly) think that 
they have to write in English and don't find the right words; or their 
edit was so complex that they feel they can't do justice to it in a 
changeset comment, or whatever.

So yes, there might be reasons why someone would decline to enter a 
comment. But how far should an editor go in encouraging them, even 
nagging them, to reconsider?

We have seen in the past, when Potlatch was young and buggy, that lots 
of people flamed against Potlatch - *especially* on talk-de, I guess 
you'll remember. That was because the Potlatch editor let people do some 
things which the majority of the community did not like; often, Potlatch 
users weren't even aware that in the eyes of the community they 
"misbehaved". I don't have to explain that to you.

An editor that makes it too easy - or, let's take a placatively extreme 
example, an editor that doesn't even ask for a changeset comment - would 
surely be viewed as problematic by the community, and its use not 
recommended. On the lists, people would say: "Oh, another guy using the 
XYZ editor, so no changeset comment of course.".

I am adamant that JOSM should not make it too easy for people to not 
enter a changeset comment. I think it should be possible to omit it if 
one really wants to (so the 3-character rule we had until now was 
perhaps not really good). But I think it is the obligation of the editor 
to make it perfectly clear to the user that their edits *will* be viewed 
as "less cooperative" by a large majority of the community if they don't 
carry a proper changeset comment - if not at least an *effort* is made.

That's what the discussion on *this* list is about - not whether 
changeset comments are good or bad, or whether Frederik is an evil 
dictator who wants the project to cater to his personal taste, or (as 
was suggested to me in a personal email) whether or not Frederik uses 
meaningful changeset comments himself.

This discussion is about the question how much an editor should try to 
influence the user's behaviour vis-a-vis the community. There is 
absolutely no doubt in my mind that a contribution *without* a changeset 
comment is inferior to the exact same contribution *with* a changeset 
comment (unless of course the comment is "..." or "fuck you"). But how 
far should an editor go in trying to keep users from making such 
inferior contributions (or help them making them better)?

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"