I've been thinking more on this. Honestly. Gates should just, flat out, be automated for the player. Forget just automatically closing. Forget it opening and closing while on a horse only. It should to BOTH, all the time. You walk into a gate, and the door opens, and closes, as you pass through it.
If you want the gate open normally, that is when you click on it, not for walking through it though. I've been frequently annoyed by the clicking I had to do with the gate. Originally I was thinking that there might be a good reason to have it be a block, unless you actually want to physically open it, but I really can't think of one.
Like, why wouldn't I want to just be able to walk through the frikken gate without clicking? It's a good quality of life improvement, with no downsides that I can see.
I honestly miss the ability to hop over the fence, like I could with the Harvest Moon stone fence. I suppose hopping the fence would be a bit much though.