Circling back to “a way forward”.
I think it is clear that none of the ideas presented so far, actually is a practical fix for the perceived highway=path ambiguity. Even if one method was chosen and pursued, highway=path without further tags would still exist in OSM for a very long time.
Which means that data users still need to figure out what to do with highway=path. Not displaying or routing them at all is one option, data users are free to decide that, but I would turn away from any renderer or router that does that before you can say “Iznogoedh”. I’m a hiker, and I need my paths!