I would like for the comment field to be required whenever someone closes a ticket.

Voting YES for this. Plugins are nice, but this seems to be a best practice in all the QA/Dev positions I've held. I hate getting a card assigned to me and not knowing why. It should be native in JIRA

I made the 'Comment' Field Required using Behaviours in Script Runner Plugin.
So whenever i edit something it asks to put in a comment. It even works for transitions.
Isnt this a Solution ? What am i missing here ?

Thanks for everyone's feedback and votes.

We've taken a look and we've decided that we won't be implementing this feature in the near future. We will be focusing our development efforts on other work that we believe will deliver a better experience.

Please note that votes is one of the determining factors that we use to plan our roadmaps, for a full description please read our blog post: https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/110373/how-does-the-jira-team-use-jira-atlassian-com.

We hope you understand and appreciate our honesty on these requests.

Thanks,
Otto Ruettinger
oruettinger @ atlassian dot com

Similar to JRA-4972

The JJUPIN plugin introduces a Simple Issue Language meant to simplify your special processsing in conditions, validators or post-functions.

The next code implements the same behavior as requested by this issue.

if(not(hasInput("comment"))) 
   return false, "Comment", "A comment is required";

The return values of a validator describe:

• false: the result of the validation
• "Comment": The name of the field having validation issues
• and the message to be displayed

Here is how you create a condition, validator or post-function: http://confluence.kepler-rominfo.com/display/JJUP20/Writing+Validators%2C+Postfunctions+and+Conditions

Give it a try here: https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.keplerrominfo.jira.plugins.jjupin
or here http://jira-plugins.kepler-rominfo.com/x/product/id/3

This is a specific example of the wider requirement represented in JRA-15297. I encourage everyone to vote on that request.

Requiring comments on all edits would be really useful. Right now, someone comes and moves my issue out of a version without any explanation. I need to fetch the guy and ask for the reason. A comment would save the time for both of us and also record the reason.

There are two issues.

One is requiring comments on transitions. There are validators that do this nicely:

http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRAEXT/JIRA%2BMisc%2BWorkflow%2BExtensions

The second issue is requiring comments on all changes. That is a different kettle of fish entirely and I can't provide any pointers.

We also have a requirement to force the user to add a comment. This seems like a simple option to enable or add it to the workflow.

Quote:

One problem I have with this though - what's to stop a user just putting in "." or random junk text when a comment is mandatory?

... Regular expression validation?