text: "if there is a small path between the houses and the gully for you to walk down it doesn't automatically make it a park."
  
  Mmm, maybe, but I lean toward "no."  Here is my disagreement:  if I can or do enter the area and recreate (hike, contemplate, enjoy the pretty trees and sound of the creek...), I have just treated the area "like" a park.  "As if" it IS a park.  Therefore, I'm OK tagging something like that "park," though it may not contain amenities (and nowhere in leisure=park's wiki do we say "amenities are required in a park").
  
  You might feel that this is the same as your annoyance with "people's lawns being defined as parks," (which I am annoyed with, too, as it's wrong).  However, "people's lawns" are private property, and this is public land, free for anybody to enter and recreate.  It is administered by the county parks department.  Is that a park?  I call it a weak version of one (yet one nonetheless) and you say it isn't.  Please bolster your argument as to why it isn't; I'm listening.
  
  I didn't say it is under development (like with backhoes and construction crews), I meant in the sense of "as public land, in the jurisdiction in the county parks department as a protected area which may someday be a park with improvements").  Some in OSM are beginning to toss around the idea of a tag like "proto_park" for places like this, but I haven't seen (nor done) any tagging like this (yet, I'm still listening).  I did say it is "unimproved," these are two different things.