I think if we want terrainplots to be public (which in itself is a good idea!) we need a really indepth guide for it.
The reason why i dont give plot out like nothing is just because it still costs me a lot of time to introduce adventurers (even some artists) to the topic of smoothing.
Then after they didnt finish satisfactory/not at all it costs me even more time to finish the plots before accepting them.
Just like Eriol stated, its not easy at all. Even if u might think so at first.
So thats the one point against public plots. We will get a lot of messed up plots cause we cant supervise the first few minutes which pretty much is essential for the plot to turn out good.
Imho even a indepth smoothing-guide cant guarantee good results, cause u know how lazy people are... And if they wanna build they dont wanna read a long guide on something "trivial" as terrain.
Maybe a mix-solution is best, like whenever there is easy terrain we set up many small plots and make them public, but for harder terrain we keep bigger plots and assign them.
Or maybe there is a way to invite certain people to a plotbuild, so they freely can take any plot they like.
That way we could be supervising the first time someone smooths terrain, but after that add them to the list of players the plots are "public" to.
On vegetation: I thought that would happen in jobs after bassic terrain (smoothing, rivers, roads) is done. And yes, ofc they have to decide on a style first