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

[Ulf Lamping]

Am 04.08.2010 01:19, schrieb Frederik Ramm:
> Ulf,
>
>> P.S: Yes, this isn't a theoretical situation. While riding my
>> motorbike, I frequently have a lot of such tiny changes spread over a
>> huge area.
>
> Perhaps we can try to be a bit more reasonable about this.

That's what I'm trying to do.

> I have the impression that those who oppose changeset comments,
> including you, think that they are expected to write an essay.

In software development, I've written anything from "shit!" to a 1000 
chars essay what's going wrong - or simply nothing.

That's the thing: It *really* depends on the situation ...

> The way I like to think of this is: If you speak to another mapper later
> that day, and they ask you "what you've been up to?" and you answer them
> in one sentence - that's what you should put as a changeset comment.

Sounds like a good rule of thumb how to add comments - a thing we just 
still miss.

> I agree that if you were to add 100 POIs and upload each in their own
> changeset, it would be tedious to actually put an *individual* changeset
> comment to each. Ideally, you would keep a changeset open and have them
> all in one changeset, but if you must have lots of mini-changesets with
> only one or two changes each, then that's a case where I'd just re-use
> the same changeset comment. After all, if you *had* put them all in one
> changeset then the comment would have been "added POIs from motorcycle
> survey".

I've tried to add all of the changes in one rush. This too often 
resulted in an OutOfMemoryException. Not a situation I want to upload 
something.

So my habit becomes to upload (very) tiny locations.

> I think we should find the best way to make as many users as possible
> understand why changeset comments are useful, and supply them as good as
> they can when they use JOSM.

I'll perfectly agree.

> If the best way to do that turns out to
> actually drop any user nannying in JOSM and just put a decent
> explanation in the user manual or so, I'm game.

My idea is that JOSM should explain (or links to help) why those 
comments are useful and help the user how those could look like (in a 
guideful but neutral language).

But if the user turns out to ignore those info (for whatever reason), 
it's not JOSMs job to enforce those comments.

Regards, ULFL