> We use it to save our progress
Saving progress is useless if your history is a mess and you have no idea what a previous state contains.
> backup files, communicate with others.
You do know that there are better tools than a VCS specifically built for these use cases, right?
> You know, the main benefits of version control?
No, I don't think you understand what version control is for.
You can use a knife to open a wine bottle, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea.
> Writing a story no one will ever see is not one of them.
You won't. I definitely will, and I take the liberty to be as verbose as I need in personal projects.
> Write real docs and your PM, QA, SMEs will benefit as well, not only developers who bother to dig thru the history.
You should write "real docs", but that's not what commit messages are for. They're not meant to be read by non-developers either. And developers don't have to "dig thru the history" to see them. Commits are easily referenced and accessible.
> Saving progress is useless if your history is a mess…
Nope, it works, commit! Tests pass, commit! Push.
You’ve demonstrated you don’t know what version control is for. Cleaning up the past is a peripheral nicety, that is not at all core.
In fact some situations prefer history not be changed at all.
IF you truly think the main point of version control is to maintain a coherent commit history than you are deluded. For most teams if it can do:
1. allow collaboration
2. Have branching and merging
3. Have diffs between two points in time/branches/tags
4. Allow release tagging
it is enough to work with it. Not to say that a coherent git history is great, but to call it the main point is something else. As that is definitely not how a lot of teams are using git or any version control.