Parallel to all other possibilities of how to solve the path-issues, I would welcome a “task force” that would work in exactly this: a proposal of what types of path we have. Once we know the types we’re dealing with, we could try to group them into something meaningful, so that we end up with a few clearly distinctive categories that can be used as presets and maybe another sub-tag to go further into detail. And this time, we should be very thorough.
Even if we don’t end up using these as official tags, understanding the types of paths out there—whether we even want to call them paths—would be beneficial. Right now, the only consensus seems to be that highway=path isn’t helpful, but people have very different opinions what issues arise from it.
I know that especially @Hungerburg has been trying to do exactly this for quite some time now, and I like how diverse the opinions and examples have been so far 