Hello, 

I would usually post this message in the ideas section, but wanted to get more feedback on it first. Right now, the idea might be too complex or convoluted for Strava to open it to voting. 

Does anyone else think that Strava should develop different tiers or categories for segment competitiveness? I love segments, and prefer seeing more rather than less segments. However, Strava doesn’t currently differentiate the prestigious segments from the segments that are just lucky to exist. For instance, you could run the Boston Marathon segment and then run a completely random segment afterwards. On your stats page, the two segments will look equally important. There are verified segments, but there are only a handful of them located in a few megacities. 

Personally, I think Strava should develop a “Competition Category” similar to its Climb Categories. This Competition Category would give segments a ranking based on a formula that would include number of attempts, number of people, speed of KOM/QOM, average pace of Top 10, length of segment, etc. Creating a feature such as the one described would help people focus their attention when analyzing their segment times, and could also create greater popularity for the more competitive segments. Right now, getting a KOM on a segment with only one previous attempt looks the same as getting a KOM on a segment with 100,000 attempts. I think it would really help if Strava developed a method to show that some KOMs are better than others. 

What are your thoughts?