https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Tag:highway%3Dfootway&diff=next&oldid=2754495
Was this change from @supsup discused? I think this doesn’t match with the accepted proposal of highway=path.
Yes, here: Consuming highway=path, Take 3 - #77 by supsup
Of course, if it is not consensual, I have no problem with it being reverted/adjusted. It seems to me that it mirrors actual usage (highway=footway has de facto status).
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According to the proposal, footway et all were not deprecated. Path+designated: can according to the proposal have the same meaning as footpath (and cycleway and brittleway). However, from having been to various countries and using(and subsequently editing) OSM maps there and also the debate linked above, my edit corresponds with a distinction between highway=path and highway=footway that seems to have emerged over those 16 years since the proposal.
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A side conversation buried deep in a thread and waiting just 7 days to make a potentially ‘non-consensual’ change doesn’t count as a proper discussion. I’ve reverted your wiki edit.
If you’d done a quick search, you’d have seen that paved highway=path is common in urban areas in Asia, and the difference there between footways and paths isn’t about construction but access tags.
Traveling to a few countries doesn’t automatically make you an expert on how OSM is used globally—it can come off as uninformed and a bit overconfident.
If you’re proposing a major change to a highway wiki page, please do your research, start a fresh thread, and give it time for consensus—think weeks, not days.
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Your observations are absolutely correct.
In most countries, they tend to be constructed and either [[Tag:surface=paved paved]] or with smooth surface ([[Tag:surface=compacted compacted]], [[Tag:surface=wood wood]] or similar). The elderly and small children and quite often also wheelchair users can use them with ease. You more often find them in urban settings, but not always.
Paths kept mainly by the fact of people walking on them or paths that are only minimally constructed are usually tagged as [[Tag:highway=path highway=path]] in most countries. Their surface might be uneven (typically [[Tag:surface=ground ground]]) and one might need to be physically fit and situationally aware to use them. They tend to be located outside of urban enviromnent. [[Tag:route=hiking Hiking trails]] are a typical example and {{Key sac_scale}}, {{Tag trail_visibility}}, {{Key surface}} and {{Key access}} are useful.
But if you leave out the fact that “path” is intended for multi-purpose paths,
For multi-use or unspecified paths and trails used by a variety of non-motorised traffic the tag {{Tag|highway|path}} may be better suited.
one can easily get the impression that highway=path is primarily intended for unpaved paths, as most people who haven’t read the wiki would probably think. Also multi-purpose paths can be very well constructed and paved.
The fact that unpaved paths dominate there is mainly because there are a lot of them and there is no other highway type where they can be better classified.
And please provide a link to the discussion in the edit comment for such changes in the wiki so that one can later understand on what basis someone changed something in the wiki.
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@Duja, 
here’s why I reverted earlier the wiki change that you just reverted now. I find this approach of ‘let’s discuss for two weeks and then make global wiki updates’ really frustrating and inefficient.
How is the global community supposed to stay on top of new discussions that pop up in two weeks, with dozen or hundreds of posts like this one, and potentially non-consensual/controversial wiki changes?
Honestly, at this rate, I will just start adding country-specific statements like ‘in country X, region X…’ to every highway page, like what’s been done for the UK. It seems like we’ll end up with a bunch of pages full of country-specific rules.
Or… a more efficient and constructive approach would be to reach out and survey members from all countries on how they distinguish footway vs path, and take the time to listen and wait for feedback and results. Something useful might come out of it. But when I read “in most countries” and see the discussion includes members almost exclusively based in western/developed nations, I can’t help but raise an eyebrow.
The fact is that the use of highway=path vs. highway=footway in a lot of countries exactly matches what supsup was documenting here and the use of highway=path is discouraged/non-standard for multi-use paths.
You are right that it should not state that as a universal fact for the whole world, but that should be documented with these caveats. Conversely, advertising highway=path as the universal solution for multi-use ways is also similarly incorrect.
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Fair enough – but you could have said so it in the Wiki edit summary.
The general principle with Wiki edits is just the same as with map edits – be bold, do it, and if a sufficient number of people sees it an finds it acceptable, then it will stick. We cannot discuss every single Wiki change for months in advance.
Now, you do have a point that “in most countries” could be an overstatement that needs deeper investigation and survey than has been done. But, until that happens, a better course of action could have been to weaken the statement so as to read “many” or “some” countries – the controversy obviously exists, and should be documented.
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But as with map edits, we do not rerevert without discussion.
I had not been aware of this discussion (and it’s inconvenient that on-wiki edits are discussed off-wiki). But whatever, I’m self-reverting now.
Back to the substance, I still think that the controversy should be explained on-wiki, possibly with weaker wording, until we gather more worldwide data.
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That also applies to the original revert
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Oh, I did not want to start a revert war :-D. Definitely mea culpa for not including the link to the thread as a comment ot the change on the wiki.
The distinction is not just from my experience and one thread here, it is expressed elsewhere, for example here (for Norway and Slovakia): stop displaying highway=footway and highway=path differently · Issue #1698 · gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto · GitHub
However, using “most” instead of “many” or some was overconfident.
The wiki page for footway only has urban paved examples in the pictures. It does not explain well at all what is the difference between highway=path and highway=footway. Sure, the difference is murky and ill-defined. However, there is a significant group of people/areas, where it actually became quite well defined. I think that should be documented.
It would actually indeed be good to work out which countries fall where. So I would propose this:
The tag highway=footway is used for mapping minor pathways which are used mainly or exclusively by pedestrians. In some countries (for example Slovakia or Norway), they tend to be constructed and either paved or with smooth surface (compacted, wood or similar). The elderly and small children and quite often also wheelchair users can use them with ease. You more often find them in urban settings, but not always.
Paths kept mainly by the fact of people walking on them or paths that are only minimally constructed are usually tagged as highway=path in those countries. Their surface might be uneven (typically ground) and one might need to be physically fit and situationally aware to use them. They tend to be located outside of urban enviromnent. Hiking trails are a typical example and sac_scale=*, trail_visibility=*, surface=* and access=* are useful. In some countries like UK or Germany, this distinction does not hold and highway=path and highway=footway can be used interchangeably. highway=path may also be better suited for ways that are not for cars but that are in addition to pedestrians also used by motorcycles, cyclists and horses etc.,
Bold are changes to the original change. People can extend the examples to providea a better list. IT would also be possible to only keep the first sentence " The tag highway=footway is used for mapping minor pathways which are used mainly or exclusively by pedestrians." before Content and split the following text into two sections lower in the wiki:
- Footway vs. path
- Other tags to consider
(I also find it weird there are so many specific mentions of UK, would make more sense to concentrate them in one page for the UK:-))
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I’m not sure whether the restriction to some countries is necessary. In principle, it is true that these non-build paths are mapped as paths rather than footpaths - even in Germany.
I just want it to be clearer that the reverse is NOT necessarily TRUE
If the path is built, paved but multi-purpose, it can be be also mapped as highway=path with [mode]=designated. (maybe depending on the country, Germany with the shared-used foot-/cycleways is one of the examples 2 Mio path 300 K with foot/bicycle=designated)
For multi-use or unspecified paths and trails used by a variety of non-motorised traffic the tag {{Tag|highway|path}} may be better suited.
I still think this was absolute correct an the part with the mutli-use was missing after your first edit.
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I’d prefer it say that some people use highway=path for this purpose and other people think that’s a terrible idea.
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It’s 300,000 ways only in Germany. I do not think this was a good idea, but it was fitting to the accepted highway=path proposal.
What I don’t think is a good idea is to interpret things into tags that aren’t documented and then later gradually change the definition of the tag because its use no longer fits the original (accepted) definition.
Such re-definitions are certainly sometimes necessary, but then please do so via a new proposal. If there is agreement on this, the proposal should go through quickly.
Take another example: in countries where motorcycles are common but legal access signs aren’t (e.g. Asia), multi-purpose narrow paths—often paved—get tagged as highway=path + motorcycle=yes. Some of these paths are strictly for motorcycles and are tagged as highway=path + motorcycle=designated.
Why not use highway=footway? Because these minor pathways are mainly used by motorcycles and such tag would be misleading.
I still believe the key difference between footway and path is about the main (legal) usage, not whether it’s paved or unpaved. So I don’t see any reason why a hiking trail that’s signposted for pedestrians only couldn’t be tagged as highway=footway.
I think what most people want at the end is to see paved/unpaved pathways rendered differently, which is completely fine, but that’s what other tags like surface and smoothness are meant for.
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Some people tag narrow paved motorcycle pathways as regular roads or even service=alley, and other people think that’s a terrible idea. 
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However, highway=footpath has never been put into a proposal, has it? (does it not predate proposal process?) Anyhow, on one hand, there is a definition " The tag highway=footway is used for mapping minor pathways which are used mainly or exclusively by pedestrians." that is not going anywhere and then on the other hand, there is the actual usage. Not everything that goes to wiki goes through a proposal process. When the usage varies by region, I think it is better to document it (maybe in a better way than I suggested) then expect users to somehow glean it from who knows where.
Yeah, the part about multi-use fell out, I added it(seeabove, it was malformated). I reworder it a bit to be less abstract.
Yes, however in practice this is quite often achieved by path/footway distinction. Adding surface=ground to millions of paths is similar amount of work as fixing footways in the mountains and devising a new tag for non-cars road=like things used by different users.
I would like to stress again that my edit was not meant to prescribe anything (that is why it used things like “most countries” “usually” “most often” “tend” and so on) but merely document widespread but not universal practice.
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Yes, both are terrible ideas! We need a new tag highway=motorcycleway!
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I get the impression that most of the commenters here actually want something similar but from different perspectives:
- In some countries,
highway=pathfeels like a natural solution for rural or natural areas, where there’s much less of a formal distinction between footpaths, bikepaths, bridlepaths, and cartpaths. Even if there are rules about which vehicles may use the path, what matters more is which vehicles can use the path. - In other countries, that formal distinction frequently doesn’t exist in urban areas either, and anyways it’s too specific, because other kinds of vehicles are common.
- Meanwhile, some mappers conclude that the more generic
highway=pathtag is necessary to communicate equal priority on a formal shared use path in an urban setting. I think this was the focus of thehighway=pathproposal, which redefined that preexisting tag.
The common denominator to all three perspectives is the level of regulation. In a lightly regulated environment, or where the authorities intentionally “level the playing field”, highway=path avoids picking favorites. We may quibble over where to draw the line between a rural or urban environment, or whether a shared use path is adequately marked as such, but the basic principle is that highway=path is a catch-all for when the specific allowed vehicles aren’t the path’s single defining characteristic.
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