Hi!
OpenStreetMap is a map that anyone can edit and anyone can freely reuse. It has a huge ecosystem, and can thus be a bit confusing to edit or to work with.
I thought that having a weekly thread to ask all beginner questions would be nice for everyone interested, so - go for it!
If you know the answer to a question, please answer (so that I don’t have to answer everything).
Whelp, this is the beginners-question chat! This is already quite advanced what you are doing there!
You will find more information on the wiki page on sidewalks and the crossings page. However, there is no consensus on how to do it. Some map it as discrete way (but this is a lot of work, duplicates some data such as streetnames), others map it as tag on the road. Both approaches have advantages and drawbacks; for some real-life situations it makes sense to do it one way and it others the other makes a lot of sense. And there is a grey area where neither approach is a good fit…
Not to mention that this is done differently in some countries due to OSM-tradition, different legal implications or forms of the sidewalk… So, good luck with this journey!
Believe it or not, I started last week. :)
My area has been doing sidewalks as separate ways, though very little is complete. I’ve already filled in more than a square kilometer of sidewalks with all their crossings and curbs, but just encountered my first intersection with this sort of weird grey area crossing where there is a traffic light but no pedestrian signal.
Well, that is impressive! Personally, I only map sidewalks separately if they are clearly separated by a decent amount (>1m) over a longer stretch of pavement