Paths on Moorland

On the open moorland of Dartmoor, I recently found somebody had added the gps trail of their walk and converted it to a footpath. It wanders around a bit, goes from tor to tor , zig-zagging a bit, in a cut-out circle.

My questions are: On open moorland where there is freedom to walk, shouldn’t paths be “generic paths” or “tracks” instead of “footpaths” (Which to me denote official foot and bridle paths as marked on the OS map)?

Secondly, isn’t this a bit messy to mark every little path on the moor, especially in this meandering way? There are sheep and pony tracks across the moor sometimes every few meters away from each other, to mark every one would have paths more frequent than contours!

There are still actual public footpaths on access land. These could be tagged highway=footway, designation=public_footpath (or whatever designation is correct).

I agree. Probably best to stick to major paths across the moor, which could be tagged as highway=footway (without the designation tag, unless they are designated public footpaths). If other users did want to add every little path then highway=path could be used, perhaps.