This dilemma is mostly predicated on the ergonomics of whichever editor you’re using. For an iD user, for instance, tagging sidewalk:* isn’t necessarily simpler than drawing a sidewalk way. And even if iD adds a sidewalk field, there will always be mappers who gravitate toward a separate-way representation, just as some newcomers instinctively map each shop in a strip mall as an area. On the other hand, it’s pretty hard to imagine StreetComplete in its current state helping its users map sidewalk and crosswalk ways when even stop signs pose a difficult challenge.
If the goal is to maximize coverage while prioritizing ease of entry, then I wonder what folks in this thread think of using automated approaches based on imports, road geometry heuristics, or computer vision as a starting point. None of these approaches is perfect by any means, but the quality triangle only has so many vertices.
Maybe if the question were posed differently, this thread wouldn’t go on forever. It has been pretty clear from the start that there’s no one way to map a sidewalk. But if there could be consensus about the acceptability of sidewalk and crosswalk ways, then most of the proponents of that mapping style would take that as a very positive change. Beyond that, I’m stubbornly hopeful the community will someday come around to sidewalk ways, just as I finally gave in about stop bars, if only because reality defies any attempt at simplification.