Lets consider surface=trail as deprecated

General talk Tagging general discussion
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surface=trail has no clear meaning, any plausible use can be expressed with existing surface tags (especially surface=unpaved and surface=ground and surface=earth)

It is almost entirely used by two people which are inactive, not responding to changeset comments and heavily used it in limited areas.

Out of 5880 currently present uses - 5417 were added by one account and 209 by another. Next account is at 31 uses of this tag.

I propose to document it as deprecated on OSM Wiki.

See osm tag history and Tag:surface=trail - OpenStreetMap Wiki for further documentation

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Wikipedia about trail:

A trail, also known as a path or track, is an unpaved lane or small road usually passing through a natural area.

So, this is essentially synonymous to surface=unpaved and can be deprecated.

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I agree to deprecate the value as it is not meaningful.

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It is marked as deprecated.

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