Well, it's true I made *a* change to that wiki page, but I did not make *that* change.

border_type=state has been there since the 2009 version by Skippern:
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Key:border_type&oldid=323226

In 2017 it was cleaned up to the current format by stevea:
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Key:border_type&oldid=1490725

You might be able to contact either of them to find out why they did that -- I know stevea is still very active on OSM US and he's pretty approachable.

I tagged them border_type=state for 1) consistency since 14 of the states had it, 36 did not, 2) I use it in the way I described in my other response, 3) and in this post we discussed adding border_type=* to boundaries in the US: https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/proposed-double-entry-of-consolidated-city-counties/122459

Perhaps this upset your use of the data in some way?  What was your work around for the 14 states that had border_type=state?