My general philosophy for how most people would use the map is “where are things and how do I get there?” With that in mind, I usually focus on adding stores, amenities, and other bits of infrastructure that people are likely to interact with, as well as making sure the roads and sidewalks are accurate.

I don’t always feel like working on these things though, so there are some days where I will just map grass, trees, fences, or whatever else I find interesting at the time.

As far as I understand it, the node is more useful for car routing, since it marks the exact point on the road where the intersection crosses, while the way is more useful for pedestrian routing, where the actual path to be traveled is more relevant. I agree that it seems redundant, but for all I know, car routers might totally ignore any pedestrian footways, which would prevent them from filling in the crossing data on the fly.