> If we ask new contributors to learn from the commit history, they are likely 
> to
> find the inconsistency and feel confused.


simply decreasing complexity might be a reasonable choice here.

an honest question follows that i cannot confidently judge, but i do have an 
intuition about:

is the net balance of the following two a clear positive?

1) total time spent on learning, communicating, arguing, and writing the 
ChangeLog format messages for *every* commit (including the email excanges when 
patches are rejected, let alone debating which "right" format it is)

2) the *decrease* in total time spent searching around in the repo history

and also considering that now we have `git log --patch --grep` and various 
other tools.

PS: some of the second order effects could also be relevant here (e.g. 
filtering contributors for personality type), but i doubt that would be a 
conscious choice, and accordingly i don't see that discussed either.

-- 
• attila lendvai
• PGP: 963F 5D5F 45C7 DFCD 0A39
--
“When we become aware of how the school system is a conditioning agent to 
instill in children obedience to authority, passivity, and tolerance to tedium 
for the sake of external rewards, we begin to question school performance as a 
metric of well-being. Maybe a healthy child is one who resists schooling and 
standardization, not one who excels at it.”
        — Charles Eisenstein, 'The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is 
Possible' (2013)


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