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

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

    I have changed the way JOSM treats changeset comments. This is a 
politically sensitive topic (see recent discussion on talk list), so I'd 
value your input. I'm willing to revert the change (applied in r3399) if 
people think it is for the worse.

Tha vast majority of mappers agree that changeset comments are useful, 
and that it is good if they are used. Where there's disagreement, 
however, is in the question of whether edtiors should enforce changeset 
comments or not.

Some people do not want to enter changeset comments, and thus are 
unhappy if their editor forces them to.

Some people want to enter changeset comments and want everyone else to 
do it, but they fear that forcing people to enter something will only 
create bitterness, and people will start entering useless comments like 
"some fixes", "..." and the like.

Some people think that the editor must not give people an excuse not to 
enter a changeset ("but I didn't know it was required...") and thus want 
the editor to enforce that as far as possible (of course no editor can 
check whether what's entered makes sense).

For a while now, JOSM has forced people to add a changeset comment that 
is at least three characters long, and refused to perform an upload 
otherwise. In addition, JOSM *always* loaded that last recently used 
changeset comment as a default, making it easy for people to erroneously 
continue using an old comment.

I have now changed this in the following way:

* The last recently used changeset description is only loaded as default 
if it was used less than 4 hours ago. Otherwise there is no default.

* If you try to upload a changeset with a comment of less than 10 (!) 
characters, there's a dialog that explains the importance of changeset 
comments, and asks the user to reconsider. The user may refuse to 
reconsider, in which case JOSM will proceed with the upload, even if the 
changeset comment is empty.

I think that this strikes the right balance between trying to educate 
the user and still giving him the freedom to say no.

I do have an user interface problem however. The dialog I'm displaying 
is a bit funny. It has the buttons "yes, reconsider" and "no, continue 
uploading" (because I *want* people to reconsider - thus the fat green 
check mark with that option). But now if you see the dialog and press 
ESC, it proceeds with uploading, which is undesirable. I don't know how 
to solve this. Any ideas?

As I said, if people think this makes things worse, we can always go 
back. It's a difficult thing. Nobody likes to be bossed around by 
software - but then again it's no good if the software makes it sound 
like everything is ok and later you get flamed on the mailing lists (by 
people like me) for not using changeset comments ;)

Bye
Frederik

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