[OSM-talk] A forest ... what?

[Warin]

The subject question ...

To me:

An OSM forest is what?

OSM uses landuse=forest ... so the and is used for forestRy (note the R) 
... to grow trees and use them for some human productive activity ... 
like eventually making paper.


An OSM wood ?

Here OSM uses 'natural=wood' so a place where a wood occurs naturally .. 
but OSM also uses the key 'natural' for things that are impacted by 
humans .. so 'unnatural' too.
I'd much rather that OSM would use 'landcover=wood' as that is much 
clear as to what is mean .. what is is this area covered with? Trees.

---------------------------------
As for crossing polygons/ways ...
In JOSM there is a tool to simplify ways with errors of less than 3 
metres in order to reduce the data base size.
This amount of error is judged acceptable.
So using that 3 meter error as being acceptable many crossing things can 
be eliminated ... I use errors of < 0.4m.
While technically incorrect, misleading and wrong... the impact on the 
practical map?
Very few people will find it.
The number who would have a problem with it will probably need to use a 
legal source anyway.