Personally, I like to micromap. I’ve mapped individual trees, poles, benches, and trashcans, for example. I also like to map forested/scrub areas. Buildings themselves are also kind of fun to map, so long as I have the building plugin installed to JOSM.
That’s messed up! That isn’t a valid reason to remove them to be honest, I would probably revert their changeset which removed yours and push back…