I see a clear parallel to software commenting ;<( Anyone understands and appreciated the comments when they are there, but no programmer ever is enough "on-focus" to spoil time in commenting....
I have some experience in software analysis for medical equipment, and software quality is clearly correlated to the amount of comments.... In JOSM however, we can ease the user in maintaining a self updating drop down box, and a number of standard comments with ..... behind it to stimulate completing. Updating highways ...... (user fills-in :) Updating highways = cycleways near Moskou But it isn't easy, as I find myself mixing updates, adding all kind of stuff, and fix some tags, add a traffic light and do some cycle routing (relation) in one and the same session .... What to comment in such diversity ? Maintenance in Moskou ??? Gert Gremmen ----------------------------------------------------- Openstreetmap.nl (alias: cetest) Before printing, think about the environment. -----Oorspronkelijk bericht----- Van: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] Namens Frederik Ramm Verzonden: Thursday, April 23, 2009 11:40 AM Aan: Rolf Bode-Meyer CC: josm-dev Onderwerp: Re: [josm-dev] Commit message not empty Hi, Rolf Bode-Meyer wrote: > That's exactly what I think can be a problem for users. > Users should have an idea of what type of comment is expected and > connected to this what it will be used for, where it will appear. Let them learn by doing. Let them write "bicycle ride" or "afternoon in the rain" on their first commits. They will sooner or later find out what this is about. And forcing them to enter *something* will make them think; will make them bring up the question the next time they have a beer with fellow mappers. Allowing them to simply hit enter will make them ignore the topic and forget about it. The "leave empty if unsure" makes it easy for users to ignore the concept and I don't want to make this easy for them. Bye Frederik _______________________________________________ josm-dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/josm-dev _______________________________________________ josm-dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/josm-dev
