For me Notes are the way for a normal user (that will not edit the map themself) to report an issue. As such mappers that use Notes for their personal surveying can be a bit of a annoyance, since it can make it harder to find the problems that a user has posted. Especially if the Notes are left open for long or they clearly create more Notes than they solve. But this is the freedom of OSM, much is done in different ways with different motivation.

I use Notes to find new places to visit and while there a do a bit of mapping. I will use JOSM or openstreetmap.org (with Notes layer) to find an interesting spot. Then take a walk, my bike or car and go on an adventure. My last vacation got me to many interesting spots based on Notes. I am thinking of planning my next vacation with the sole purpose of closing the oldest Note in my country.

Some days ago I solved a 7 year old Note, the building was still missing, the company was still there in their new building, now they are both on the map. I don’t see time as simple way to tell if a Note is valid or not, it is more a question of does something need to change in the data.

I think there is big differences on how Notes works in different countries depending on the maturity of the map data, number of mappers, “normal users” and note solvers.