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

[Frederik Ramm]

John,

John Smith wrote:
> On 31 July 2010 22:05, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:
>> That is indeed selfish, because you're saying that your time is more
>> valuable than theirs.
> 
> And you are saying their time is more valuable than the person
> contributing the data

No. Equally valuable. But they are more. Only one person makes the 
edits, but more than one person look at the edits.

> this is going no where fast, people have their
> opinions and they are polar opposite and berating and belittling
> people doesn't seem to be shifting any opinions.

All wanted was to say: Please folks, add meaningful changeset comments. 
I think it is plain obvious that they are very useful, not only to me 
personally. Of about 20 people participating in this thread, only three 
seem to be of the opinion that changeset comments are a waste of time. 
Yes, people have their opinions and yes, some might be of that opinion, 
but luckily it is a small minority.

> So is blaming others for not commenting exactly how you think they
> should

I think there is a wide range of useful changeset comments; you're 
misrepresenting my statement if you say I was complaining about people 
not commenting "excactly how I think they should". I'm just asking for 
meaningful changeset comments.

> when up until a few hours ago the changeset comment was
> specifcally listed as optional, of course you fiddled that wiki to fit
> your opinion

No. Liz, helpfully, pointed out that the Wiki did not reflect what the 
community expects, as has been proven by this thread. I merely amended 
the Wiki to reflect that. If you carefully read the version history you 
will see that even before I made the change, the Wiki definitely said 
that the comment was used in many places; it just wasn't quite so 
obvious that people actually use it a lot.

> and when others do something similar it you attack them
> for not following the status quo.

I'm not even starting to discuss Key:UUID here.

Bye
Frederik

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