I think the underlying problem with "path" is that it creates overlapping definitions. Among data users there is a strong preference for tag combinations to be hierarchical, and I think that preference is reasonable. While having to deal with "doctor" and "doctors" is only a mild pain, trying to deal with multiple overlapping fuzzy definitions for commonly-used tags is enough to make your head spin.
So - path should either pitch itself to cover everything (ie footway should be a subset of path), or to cover a clear niche (ie path should be independent or a subset of footway). The deprecation of footway/cycleway was voted on (by not many people, but nevertheless), and the deprecation was rejected, but some people don't seem to be able to take no for an answer. You can use the same analysis for footway/cycleway. Either one is a subset of the other, or they should be clearly independent. The wiki tries to make them independent ("mainly or exclusively"), but they aren't in many countries, hence the confusion. I think treating "cycleway" as a subset of footway is a more robust model, allowing the grey area between the two to be described more accurately, rather than trying to pretend it doesn't exist. Richard
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