I don’t think this discussion about the validity of invisible or bad visible paths is getting us anywhere.
The fact is that they exist in OSM (and a lot of other maps, so nothing new there), whether it is a bad mapping habit or not. The question is what to do with them, because the majority is unhappy with using highway=path for this and using it for alpine tracks and routes. To sum up some ideas for highway=path made in the discussions:
- Subdivide highway=path and invent other keys:
- Subdivide and distinguish by main usage of path: hiking, mountaineering, mixed use cycle and pedestrian, mountain biking only…
- Divide and distinguish according to visibility: continuous visible path, traces, pathless…
- Subdivide and distinguish on the basis of width (perhaps in combination with smothness, similar to the alpine club map): a path that two people can walk side by side (wide path), only one person can walk at the same time (narrow path or “Steig”), a path that a motorbike theoretically could use (cart path), a bicycle could theoretically use…
- Remove the value
trail_visibility=noand remove all paths with this value (18 128 according to taginfo) because there is nothing on the ground. - Leave everything as it is