Yes, but that is not reflected in the actual grade descriptions. Let’s walk through documentation history.
The original 2007 proposal (never approved) classified tracktype implicitly according to surface material and usage frequency, but usage frequency never became part of the main wiki articles. The grade descriptions that first appeared in Map Features in June 2007 (viewable only in source due to template errors) used surface type, tire ruts/marks and vegetation growth as differentiators, no mention of maintenance. When these were moved to a dedicated template in January 2008, the descriptions had already started shifting toward “solid vs. soft” language and material composition, dropping “ruts” for grade3 and “plant growth” for grade5. Then, in January 2009, “tire marks“ was removed from the descriptions. The descriptions then remained essentially stable until March 2014, when firmness became the primary characteristic and material composition became secondary; still, no maintenance in grade descriptions. Only in 2019 and 2022 did construction and condition language enter: “unimproved” for grade5 in 2019, and “heavily degraded and crumbled roads which were paved” for grade2 in 2022. Even then, only as tertiary characteristics to these specific grades, not as a redefinition of the core concept.
In summary: the tag began as a classification of surface material and observable field characteristics (2007), shifted to material composition (2008), then in 2014 reframed material composition as secondary to an overarching firmness aspect. Only late in the tag’s existence (2019, 2022) did construction and maintenance concepts enter as tertiary characteristics of specific grades.
So if maintenance has been in the documentation for 15 years, apart from a single mention without further explanation, I’d be interested to see where, because the grade descriptions themselves don’t support that reading across their history.
Here is the tag usage chronology on TagInfo. Given near-linear growth, we can estimate from the dates of these changes that: almost all tracktype values were added considering surface material composition, about 65% was mapped considering firmness, about 45% of tracktype=grade4 considered construction, and less than 10% of tracktype=grade2 considered surface state/condition.
It may be worth looking at the German wiki, which is likely the documentation most relevant to Austrian mappers. The opening sentence mentions surface firmness/solidity since July 2015, but the grade descriptions themselves are organized around construction and reinforcement: whether a surface is sealed or water-bound, whether a subbase is present, and ultimately whether any materials have been added at all. That is a structural framing, not a maintenance framing, even if the two can correlate in practice. Vegetation is still mentioned as a tertiary characteristic for grade4 (older) and grade3 (added after 2015). After 2015, grade5 was changed away from the original concept (sand, earth, imprints on grass) to a less verifiable absence of construction / lack of added materials.
These divergences exist since July 2007 when tracktype descriptions were first added to the German wiki (notice the date: three weeks after the English wiki). They matter because local documentation might solidify into what feels like established global practice. The German wiki’s construction and subbase framing likely reflects central European infrastructure contexts, but applying a regionally-specific framework to a global tag would redefine a concept that was never really defined that way.