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

[Frederik Ramm]

Liz,

Liz wrote:
> so how do *you* summarise adding POIs and side streets and putting in maxspeed 
> along a hundred km of highway?
> 
> because i just put in the name of where i have been, that's all.
> and that is glaringly obvious from the bounding box

I believe that the changeset comment should be meaningful without any 
extra information.

I'm not saying that it should be in any way an exhaustive description, 
duplicating the content. That would be stupid, and unnecessary work. I 
think that you have an excellent changeset comment right there:

"added POIs, side streets, maxspeed from trip along A1234"

perfect. It tells people where you have edited, it tells them what you 
did, it even hints at the source. Most of all, it tells them that youare 
a human being, that you are diligent, and that you are respectful 
towards your fellow mappers.

The exact same edit with a changeset comment of "fixes" may add the same 
data, but it sends a wholly different message to the community (take 
your pick from anywhere between "nobody's gonna read this anyway" to "if 
you want to know what I did then go and find it out yourself").

That's sad because, as I pointed out, if you get into the habit of 
writing good changeset comments then the additional work this causes is 
going to be practically zero, whereas the quality of the change 
increases dramatically.

Bye
Frederik

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