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

[Anthony]

On Wed, Aug 4, 2010 at 10:19 AM, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:
> It is also unrealistic to expect good OSM data edits every time. Still it's
> good if people try, and good if the software helps them with it.

Agreed.

>> IMO the job of the software should be to make sure the person knows
>> the software has the ability to use comments.  Not to make it
>> difficult for them not to use comments.
>
> The software should also try and make people understand what comments are
> good for, i.e. why it is good to enter one, and perhaps give some
> information on what constitutes a "good" comment if the user is interested.

I disagree.  This is something which should be easier for
non-programmers to edit.  And it is something that should be
consistent across different editors.

> You are right if you say there is no metric to measure the usefulness of a
> comment in software.
>
> However, I have just randomly selected 100 comments of less than 10
> characters from the current end of changesets, and 100 comments of more than
> 10 characters, and there was a very noticeable correlation; in my
> non-representative sample, I found about 70 of 100 long comments useful, and
> I found about 10 of 100 short comments useful.

I think we've already determined that your idea of "useful" is
different from mine.

> So while the software cannot *ensure* that people place a meaningful
> comment, it can certainly help with that by reminding the user if it seems
> likely that his comment is one of the "10 of 100" rather than one of the "70
> of 100".

I wouldn't be so certain.  I think you're more likely to see longer
and longer useless comments.

I'd rather encourage people who don't feel they can come up with a
useful comment to leave no comment at all.  And for people who want to
leave a not-very-useful comment to use as few letters as possible.
It's much easier to filter, that way.