In May I mapped a pretty famous, but small vilage Iffeldorf (changeset 11470801) in Bavaria, Germany. I created a new node and put all village-related infomation there. I June it got deleted (changeset 12048478), because one mapper moved the village info into an area. This move made Iffeldorf disappear again from the main openstreetmap. The mapper explained that in cycling map Iffeldorf can be seen, so it is not a bug:
My question: is it allowed to define villages/towns as areas and not separate appropriately positioned nodes?
As far as I know place=* is one of the very few (if not the only) exception where there can be both an area and a single node for the same feature. I wonder whether this is documented somewhere.
Yes, it is useful to have a node for the place, as it shows where the town centre is. This may not be the same as the geometric centre of the area.
Also, I think mapping a village as landuse=residential and place=village is a bad idea. It is unlikely that the entire village is a residential area, eg it might include some commercial areas, or parks or farms etc. So more useful to map separate areas for landuse.