Temporary use tag to map potentially dangerous highway=path

[osmuser63783]

I agree with @rhhs that paths with unknown difficulty level that have been added without being surveyed are a problem (or maybe they have been added after survey, but that was 10+ years ago, when tags like sac_scale were not as popular as they are now.) There are lots and lots of bare highway=path without additional tags in mountain regions. It’s easy to say just don’t map them without adding a difficulty tag at the same time, but this is really about what to do when you notice that someone else has mapped one.

Relevant discussion on a related topic:

@osmuser63783

When hiking, I’ve noticed ways that had clearly been drawn from nothing but the Strava heatmap, or worse, nothing but a single hiker’s GPS trace. They were tagged highway=path. Sometimes there was an actual path there, sometimes not

@SomeoneElse

Things for which the only source is Strava should not be in OSM.

If someone does it, please explain to them why it’s a bad idea (starting with what you’ve described above). If they persist, report them to the DWG so that we can persuade them.

But we’re talking about thousands and thousands of paths, form the Canadian Rockies to Tajikistan, so I am wondering if OSM needs a more scalable solution?

Some tag that somehow says “don’t trust this path” could be useful. (For an experienced mapper it’s clear that highway=path, in a mountain area, last edited 10 years ago, has this meaning, but this doesn’t seem to be clear to data consumers.)