Most human endeavours and activities have aspects which can be made more 'efficient' or 'successful' but the addition of the Management Process invariably causes things to really fall apart.

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EM, thank-you for your comment and you are totally correct, councils do have the obligation to maintain RoW, but it is at the bottom of their priority lists, clearing bracken three times a year is un-practical, and personally, I quite enjoy the rougher tracks. I don't wish to complain to the council or anyone else, I'd rather just be out in the country.
My point with regard to the condition of the routes in relation to making accurate guesses at the legal rights of way, is simply that when navigating in those conditions it is almost impossible to confirm that you are on the 'correct' path - if you can't see further than a few feet you can't make good navigational judgements - you won't be "lost", just unsure whether the route you are taking is the RoW or a sheep-track.
After considering the comments made to the diary entry, it seems that the use of Public Footpath / Bridleway tags by OSM in England and Wales must be a misnomer, as it cannot be confirmed on the ground by survey (except by elaborate guesswork and inference) and if any reference is made to the Definitive Map it becomes derived data.
My personal opinion is that the OSM should be as accurate as practically possible it is therefore untenable that 'guesses' and 'reasonable assumptions' be used as the basis of plotting what after all are legally defined effects, I'm sure that it would not be good form, to for instance, 'guess' at the locations of international boundaries but that is exactly the same rational as for RoW across more remote regions.
In many of the moorland areas I frequent, I could criss-cross in all manner of directions, always following what look like the form and flow of the land and judging the shades of grasses, in an attempt to find the 'real route', but these would all be assumptions on my part and could never be relied on to be the RoW I seek.
After saying all that, I guess I should leave it each individual to deduce the accuracies of what are tagged as Public Rights of Way on OSM, but my own view is that the RoWs are very important, their nuances are historical and only quirks of fate prevented them, rather than their parallel neighbours from becoming modern roads so as such these details are worthy of the utmost respect.

I guess that's fine if all we wish to plot are the locations of the signs but what of the actual route on the ground between the signs, how do we know if any particular set of footprints are the legal "public footpath".
I don't believe it is analogous to road signs it is analogous to administrative boundaries which for the most part do not have a definite material presence on the ground without prior knowledge.

Chilly, again this is probably true with respect to copyright but if there are say two signs say 8 miles apart and the track is either not visible on the ground or there are numerous unofficial parallel tracks how can we define which is the actual ROW ?

I think we have two issues here, the first relates to copyright, and the second relates to how we can tag something relating to a legal concept because the actual ROW is not visible on the ground, only the tracks left by decades of usage, which may have no relation to the legal ROW.
I guess its like trying to route shipping lanes when there are no ships around.

David, in principle I totally agree, you are correct about the copyrights.
To clarify, I do not advocate 'copying', all my work is done from GPS tracks or occasionally line of sight so all I submit to OSM is actually from my own eyes, feet or wheels.
However the point I am making is that without 'glancing reference' to the Definitive Map (not the OS map), no one can definitively state that any ROW in England and Wales is actually a legal right of way, therefore in this capacity, any tagging, stating or inferring its legal status in OSM is erroneous.

Totally agree on the controversy comment relating to tagging non-roadways. And the differences that the various renderers display the tags seems awkward.
Personally (being in the UK and specifically England and Wales) I tag "definitive" public footpaths and Bridleways as a public footpath / bridleway which comes from Potlach as highway = footway : highway = bridleway, but any other path or track as highway = path : highway = track.
It would be nice to have walled tracks fenced/unfenced tracks etc but I guess I all ready agonise enough about tagging grass/dirt, as at any particular time of year a track can fall into either or both.

I know this area very well, however, I also have an appalling memory for names. My personal point of view (probably based on the above sentence), is that names don't really matter. Before the Ordnance Survey there must have been thousands of crags, brooks, peaks etc that were not formally named and the good people at the OS (army officers at the time), would have badgered locals in the pub for clarification, what a lark I would have if this happened now !
The other thing is that like 'chinese wispers' with the various accents in the chain of cartography corruptions would likely occur on a frequent basis.
(How many river Avon's are there in Wiltshire, and isn't Avon a corruption of Afon which means river.)
I think that the OS derivation is now 'standard', as it probably has 150 years of common usage, and as you say, the locals will even have adopted these interpretations over the years.
Therefore, don't worry too much, just keep mapping, after all the rivers don't have a care what you call them !

I think we agree on most things and I sense that you guys are as agonised on occasions as myself when trying to determine the status of a way.
I certainly do not use other maps to 'copy' and the layer that the county councils use is generated by public bodies so as a reference tool I believe is ok, all my editing is done directly from GPX traces.
I think that there should be more types of way renderable maybe even taking into consideration the state of the surface and topography but this would be a nightmare as at different times of the year the going changes so much and is also so subjective.
I am optimistic that eventually all the ways will be mapped and comprehensively tagged and as OSM is a living map will truly reflect the geography of the country (world ?).
As an aside are you guys aware of Free-Map, the rural rendering of OSM. I don't know too much about it, I think its just one chap who has to fit it around the rest of his life so it isn't updated as frequently as the more popular renderings. Maybe he could do with some assistance - it seems niche corner of OSM so maybe we should help ? What do you think ?

RichardB : I do have to refer to other maps because the rights of way are often not clearly not defined on the ground either through lack of use or because short cuts have been taken or because people have strayed following sheep tracks etc, they may well be worth mapping but a whole fell-side would then be one great mass of track, not much use to navigate by !
These signs, waymarks, sounds very useful.
Many footpaths particularly in more populous areas are very clear but here I would could venture very far without my sighting compass, full weather gear, emergency bivvy blanket and stock of Mint Cake.
I use a wrist mounted gps but only to collect data not to navigate by.

I am in the process of doing just that. I walk and cycle to get bridleways and footpaths in the remote areas. It just takes eons, often times traversing the same stretch of paths to get further and further out. I am fortunate in living in South Cumbria insomuch as I have hundreds of miles of paths and tracks, some hardly passable now and many unsignposted. Obviously I need to refer to other maps for research, each local authority retains a 'definitive map' of rights of way which gives very detailed information on rights of way. Without this information you would quite literally be lost (and much of the time be technically trespassing).
One thing that does niggle with me is that some mappers do not seem to tag the remote routes correctly, the fact that you cannot see a route on the ground does not mean that it is not a bridleway (although many bridleways would require the horse to use crampons and ropes to ascend and in some cases require a snorkle!). Some paths 20 foot wide are still only fotpaths.
It is amazing how quickly you can fill up a white area and the thrill of tagging a remote track across open moorland 15 miles from the nearest road is awsome. Also you only realise how many rights of way we have when you have to actually pass them with the aim of tagging them - until then they are not even lines on the map.

Stefan, I think you got my humor. I do also think that the rights of way are 'tolerated' to walkers and often cyclists in England, but I think that (in England), to mark a "track" as a right of way, when it clearly in law has no such status is no not doing the OSM any good service.
I think that the subject of rights of way is of great value to the OSM and as amature cartographers we should strive for accuracy in our work. Of course, there are many 'footpaths' that people use as means to get around but surely these should be marked differently to those enshrined in law as "rights" of way. I would often like to convert every gps track I generate into a track or footpath but if I did that then the whole of the area in which I live would be one great mass of tracks and totally meaningless as a means of navigation.
I am very interested in this subject and am just about to go on vaccation to an area (Scotland), which is as a whole country, effectively an access area, which means you can walk/ride/cycle just about wherever you wish. This may be a similar model to what you refer to in Germany.
I hope this thread of conversation continues and shall look forward to continuing the subject on my return.

I guess if you are right, therefore any piece of land big enough to land a 747 must by definition be an airport.

Bridleway / public footpath / byway are legal definitions of rights of way and as such can only be marked after reference to the county Definitive Map which is a public document, (many rights of way are not signed on the ground and the routes ambiguous even with reference to a large scale map).
Most authorities have very good online documentation which supercedes even the Ordanance Survey who have a disclamer printed on every map to this effect : note that I do not believe that the use of this County reference material contravenes the OSM guidelines as it is not the track itself that you are tracing - just the information relating to its legal status.
In England and Wales, unless you are in a location which has access rights (another legal term) and you are on a footpath - track - service road etc that is not defined on the Definitive Map as a right of way then you are technically a tresspasser.
Legal status does not take into account the condition of a right of way or its suitability to use as a thoroughfare (there are may examples of fords across rivers which are considerably deeper than the average walker !).
We need to be very careful about our use of terms when mapping and it would be nice if the wiki could be unambiguous about this subject.
It may be that other countries have very different rules on rights of way and again this could prove an interesting wiki subject.