Sangdol asked: Why can’t I edit and SVN commit message? There are good reasons to maintain individual records ‘as is’ for historical purposes. However, there is an arguably objective hazard in not limiting the spread and use of misleading, and dangerous data.
Aside: Certainly, sometimes, one should just suck up they’ve made an error.
That aside, er aside, it appears clearly beneficial to have some mechanism for recording and sharing the best possible information. It also seems clearly beneficial to have some mechanism for correcting ‘bad data’ and informing others of ‘hazardous data’.
In the Sangdol thread l0b0, comments:
You're right. There is a fundamentally flawed design assumption in all VCSes I've ever seen: A commit has one commit message, which is immutable. As Alex says, we should "allow multiple versions of the commit message".
To keep the question less subjective, your answers should be an objectively better practice than the ‘Moses Principle’ of, “Get it right first time, we’re carving this puppy in stone”, and address the ability to handle one or more problems along the lines of (I’m willing to update and alter this list if there are better suggestions):
Suppose I discover that a commit message I entered a month ago is misleading, confusing, and downright wrong. Shouldn't I be able to added a correcting notation that will be seen by everyone who sees the incorrect message? (I agree the original message should be easily available unmodified and the change itself should be tracked and timestamped. But I disagree that this constitutes "changing history".) – David Schwartz comment from the Sangdol question.
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