I've worked with 5 different SCMs and I'm convinced that the reason why git repos often have such poor commit messages is because of the git commit "style guide". So much of it only makes sense once you realize it's been optimized for like 5 of its original users reading it on 72 character terminal screens.

Asking people to fit a meaningful description of the change into 50 characters is silly, and it's IMO the reason why so many of them just write "fix bug" and call it a day.

Someone else has posted the Google guide for CL (change list) messages, but let me boost the signal: https://google.github.io/eng-practices/review/developer/cl-d...

This is, I believe, still the best guide out there. When I'm coaching juniors, I recommend this guide, over the opinionated and outdated git "best practices" and I think the results are much better.