I agree with those proposing a new highway=* value. I’m fine with highway=scramble or some other value.
One of the challenges we face in OSM is that highway=path is so overloaded and expansive that it can mean anything from a paved concrete sidewalk through a city park to mountaineering routes requiring ropes and anchors to protect from falls. The ends of this spectrum are fundamentally different even if there is a continuum between them.
A corollary is the road network: There might be a lot of gray-area between highway=primary and highway=secondary , but in most cases no one is going to confuse a road tagged with either of those with highway=residential or highway=motorway. Breaking the spectrum of roads into broad chunks isn’t always straight forward (and can require retagging due to misconceptions), but doing so makes the road network more intelligible to data consumers.
The proposal being discussed to segment off one end of this spectrum based on some relatively clear distinctions seems like a useful way to begin to reduce the scope of highway=path to something slightly more constrained.
Additionally, as was mentioned in another thread, there are real-life consequences to having naive renderers and routers treating all highway=path in the same fashion whether they are paved sidewalks, maintained walking trails, or mountaineering routes. By moving the most dangerous types of foot-traveled routes out of highway=path and off into highway=scramble data consumers will default to a “more-safe” gap if they don’t understand how to handle such potentially dangerous ways.