stevea (2019-05-12 18:00:47+00:00): I'll politely, respectfully and correctly answer the way/41172401 issue addressed.  As that polygon (which abuts the large farmland polygon noted above) is properly tagged landuse=forest, OSM data consumers can correctly conclude that active timber production either is going on or could go on exactly in the area described by that polygon.

That such timber production activity isn't displayed in imagery seems largely to hinge upon assumptions of:

1)  The imagery is recent and/or accurate, (which many times it isn't) and more importantly,

2)  Imagery as evidence for how land is used isn't a sole criterion for landuse, as landuse describes land use, not land cover (which is what imagery displays) and land use includes how land can be used as well as how it is used.

A simple question should help make my point:  if a swath of land in the real world is "active timberland" and yet visual imagery only shows some fraction of the land as "felled trees," should OSM not tag the full swath as landuse=forest?  I believe it should:  the land USE is forestry, even if "those trees I can still remain standing in imagery" haven't yet been felled.  Should OSM reasonably be expected to "chase the chainsaws" with updated imagery, displaying the patchwork of fallen trees as they move through the forest?  Or would it be better to tag the swath landuse=forest and accurately describe this as "active timberland?"  I believe the latter, and our wikis seem to concur.

Quoting from our Landcover wiki:  "One of the most difficult cases for landcover mapping is woodland/forests. See Forest for more details. There is not currently a good tag to describe a landcover of trees as opposed to a landuse of timber production for which landuse=forest is appropriate or natural=wood for primary unmanaged woodland. The tag landcover=trees has been proposed for this purpose. In addition, landuse and landcover are often confused. For example landuse=grass actually describes a landcover, not a use. This causes problems as one can not describe an area of railway land as being primarily covered with grass as the landuse tag is used for both purposes."  So, please, let us candidly conclude that OSM continues to have problems here in harmonizing its syntax and semantics.  (We do).

And, land cover is often expressed with natural=* tags, much less so with landcover tags (which I believe are still, technically a proposal).  In fact, our Landcover wiki says that land cover is often expressed with the landuse=* tag, as "many types of Landuse imply a certain type of landcover."  (And, "some do not").

It is apparent in visual imagery that the significant central portion of this polygon (perhaps 15% of the overall area?) has had some timber production, as it has no trees (unlike the surrounding forest), was created by me about five years ago as landuse=meadow and has been touched by user:bdiscoe.  As noted in our county wiki (and database histories) user:bdiscoe made a large-scale "hit and run" style edit in this area, with a similar smearing of semantics between landuse and landcover (apparently in his quest to remain on some leaderboard of large-contribution OSM editors).  He did not change tagging here, but it appears he added some nodes to improve accuracy, which is fine.  However, as landuse=meadow implies some sort of agricultural sense (cattle grazing, hay cultivation...) and neither is apparent, I just changed the tag on this area from landuse=meadow to what I believe is a more accurate tag:  natural=grassland (until such time as OSM has a sense of more accuracy).  This continues a trend I began last year to more accurately change meadow to grassland where no agricultural use of the land is known.