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

[Frederik Ramm]

Ed,

    I hear your point about commenting on "the why not the what". I 
agree that the "why" is important. But personally I try to add the 
"what" and the "where" as well:

> 'Adjusted road positions based on GPS traces'

There's your why and what already; I'd probably say "adjusted road 
positions in 16ieme arondissement" or something. It's true that this can 
be derived from the changeset contents/bbox but still I think it is 
useful (think of changesets arranged in a list view with just the 
numerical bbox behind it) and it costs me nothing.

> 'Traced buildings from aerial photo' or 'from OS map' or from whatever
> source you used.

Again, you have the why and what already. My comment would probably read 
"traced South Haystack buildings from aerial photo" or so.

>> - if someone renames a pub or a restaurant, it's because this person thinks
>> that his knowledge is more recent than the previous contribution
> 
> In that case perhaps no special comment is needed, though myself I'd still
> add a note saying 'I walked past this pub and the name has changed'.

Yes, of course such a change may be contained in a larger edit which 
might be called "fixed some names based on survey in West Brumpton".

*If* you do a large and unspecific edit, e.g. you hold a mapping party 
and map lots of new streets, add POIs, fix existing bugs etc., then I 
think it is perfectly ok to just write "lots of new streets & fixed 
existing data from mapping party results in XYZ" - nobody requests that 
you split up the changeset into atomic bits.

By the way, the "why", "what", and "where" are not the only kinds of 
information that can be conveyed with a changeset comment. I have often 
seen things like: "first part of mapping party results in X, rest to 
follow tomorrow", or "casual survey of Y, further visits definitely 
required!" - that's also valuable meta-information.

Changeset comments are an excellent way to share your work with other 
members of the community in a number of ways.

Bye
Frederik

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