Hope you don't mind an outsider chiming in, but with this discussion being linked in Weekly OSM and the topic being of general interest, I'd like to add my 2 cents.
On 02.09.2017 21:44, Andreas Bürki wrote:
An I stick to my statement Selfish Seahorse, deleting is imho always a very bad idea, as it might considered as (a) disrespecting somebody else's work and as well as (b) de-motivating.
A fundamental problem with current sidewalk way mapping is that the relationship between road sections and sidewalk sections is lost. That information is available when using tags on the road, and stops being available when you draw separate ways – you end up with several ways close to each other, with no machine-understandable association.
Mapping a sidewalk as a separate way may not *feel* like deleting something, but it destroys important information nevertheless.
Happy mapping, Tobias