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“Convert utf-8 to us-ascii to fix error”. Says right there in the commit title, short and to the point.

Absent some automated summarising functionality that produces just the right level of detail for you personally, a concise title and a very detailed commit message that you can skim through to find relevant bits is an eminently reasonable compromise.

Who says this?

I follow the linux kernel guidelines, which have large descriptions in commits. After all these guys wrote git.

Here's linus's take https://gist.github.com/matthewhudson/1475276

1) Just read the title 2) Maybe have TL;DR section for a summary, and details for who cares.

Having a rich commit message is extremely important for capturing code review discussions and design decisions and glue things together for the set of changes in a single place. The advantages far outweigh any negatives from a short commit message that will not give you the "why" of the solution.