[OSM-talk] A plea for meaning ful changeset comments

[Ulf Lamping]

Am 30.07.2010 13:18, schrieb Frederik Ramm:
> To them, I say: Yes, you're right, it can be a pain sometimes, but if
> you practice it for a while, it will be an easy routine.

I'm doing this day by day while doing software development - but there 
it has a much higher value: Very often you can't get the reason of a 
code change only by looking at the differences.

If I add a missing road to the road network, it's pretty clear what the 
reason was.


I think some comments are really useful, e.g. if the change are 
potentially annoying another user, like: "removed a duplicate node" is a 
valuable message to "the other one out there", that I think he has added 
a duplicate.

In a lot of other cases, comments are only a waste of time.

> If writing
> English takes you too long, use your national language, that's no
> problem. And you don't have to write long sentences, a few words are
> sufficient. But that little bit of time you spend when committing your
> changes adds so much value!

For which audience?

There are people who actively watch out "their area" what changes there. 
That's fine and valueable. But IMHO it's *their job* to make sense of 
the changes, not the mappers job.

> Don't be fooled; the small changeset comment that you enter when
> uploading stuff *will* be read by many people.

I don't think so. Do you have numbers?

> Done well, changeset
> comments are tremendously helpful.

For what?


First of all, you probably need better diff tools (I mentioned that 
before :-), not better changeset comments ...

Regards, ULFL

P.S: Your whole mail was the wrong way round. It was: "Comments are 
soooo helpful, please do it and your lame if not", but it should have 
been: "Look, this and that and those things are a lot easier for others 
if you add a comment, please do it". This way you might convince more 
people ...