[majormajor]

You're starting to contradict yourself a bit, I think.

Will I disagree that good test suites or well factored code or systems docs are more important than commit messages? No.

However... most projects do not have those things and most developers on those projects are in a "I don't know what I'm missing" sorta state where they don't bother adding them. Exactly like you point out for good commit messages.

So if 95% of projects have inconsistent and incomplete test suites, never-refactored spaghetti code, and almost no system docs, that doesn't mean we should tell people not to try to do those things. In the same way that the existence of poor commit messages doesn't mean we shouldn't try harder.

The nice thing about commit messages, being a small and simple thing, is that it would be much easier for someone to learn how to write good commit messages overnight than to learn how to write a good test suite, or to refactor their code.

[swanson]

It's commendable to strive to improve. I agree that 95% of projects are a mess. I don't think there is value in writing good commit messages in those environments, even if it is easy. If you're going to spend 30 minutes writing a super awesome commit message, I'd rather you spend those 30 minutes on improving the code or the test suite or even writing the awesome commit message in the JIRA ticket.

If you've reached the point when the next "optimization" you can do is to work on your commit messages, that is awesome.

[majormajor]

I'm picturing 1 to 2 minutes on the message, which is why I don't see it as competing with refactoring or test time.

I also think spending paragraphs on "commit message standards" is overkill. I don't care about full stops or capitalization or anything, I just want to know some basics: "What is this fixing or adding. Why is it done this way. Are there any special considerations that kept it from being done a different way?"

You bring up a good point about location, too; i don't particularly care if the info is in a ticket or commit message or a pull request, as long as I can get to it)