As the original poster directed my recent messages to him back to this thread, I figured I would post the update here.
My point of view is that unpaved throughfares should be tagged as tertiary, the regular unpaved road network that can be navigated by two wheel drive motor vehicles be tagged as unclassified, roads that can only be navigated by four wheel drive or ATV traffic or consist of two ruts be tagged as track, and access roads to buildings or quarries be tagged service. When I add new roads, this is the method I try to follow.
Note: The following comments may be considered off-topic.
Unfortunately, the original poster’s current practice seems to be to wait for me to add the road network in an area, then follow my additions around the map and change every tertiary, unclassified, and service road to highway=track, and to delete any highway=service driveway that I add. That erases all of the work I put into differentiating and classifying the roads when I add them to the map.
To give the benefit of the doubt, I even tried mapping far from the areas I usually map. I drove the roads in a two wheel drive car, camped in the area, used GPS, and tagged the main road as type unclassified, with adjoining roads leading to quarries as type service. The poster tracked my changes and changed the road network to all highway=track.
If you took every road in a city and made them all highway=residential, you might not technically be wrong, but would that be considered vandalism?
