Yes. I had a discussion with a sheep farmer a few weeks ago about exactly that vexed issue…

I agree with the defaults you suggest above. I’ve mapped some of the examples you give and having sane defaults, especially for rural paths, would guide inexperienced mappers (such as myself) along the correct lines as a ‘safe base’ to their contribution.

Mappers could then take into account the situation on the ground and amend tags as appropriate - especially for non-designated paths that may be used locally for horses/bikes (as is the case in some of the examples).

In the past I’ve tagged non-designated paths as ‘yes’ as appropriate, but ‘permissive’ may better describe the position on the ground in a lot of cases.

Finally, you’ve suggested adding the ‘designation’ tag in the past, and that becomes super-useful when using maps such as yours where designation tags are taken into account.