Dear Strava.
I’ve been a segment creator for 10+ years.
I’ve always make segments based on the actual tracks specially when these are MTB related.
In your last update 10 months ago, around my area we lost many good segments in detriment to really bad ones that stayed, just because they had more stars, which was ridiculous.
So I started making them again, tagging them with my signature which my friends now use to recognize the goog ones.
Recently you deleted some classic ones that were good, but not mines because they were good 10 months ago, so there was no need for me to create another one.
Now, with this last delete, you’ve left some bad ones which don’t start where the track actually starts, and don’t end where the track ends.
When I tried to create the new and precise one, for a track I rode yesterday, I found out now it can’t be public. So we either stick with the bad ones, or write here on community hub for a solution.
I think we need some capacity to moderate these segments, or be able to at least contact the segment owner so he fixes it (which I think is too much to ask as many people created them long ago and might not even be active on Strava...). I don’t know, but It’s definitely a bad move to not let the good users make great useful segments for everyone.
So what could we do? You could do so much better here, even using speed and power data to check when people are pushing, for instance. Or just let people justify these new public segments.
PS: as an example, the most stared segment (135!!) in a track nearby has the most insanely bad gps data you could imagine. go check the popular one vs the precise one made by me:
- Bad one (popular): https://www.strava.com/segments/1235120
- Good one (perfect track): https://www.strava.com/segments/36759809
I hope you can make things better for users, not worse as its going with segments.
Public Segments blocked. Even for better ones.
+26I see the same happening with trail running segments. On one hand, good quality segments that logical and cover an entire effort from a trail head to a local summit disappear. They actually become hidden, but you can’t see that until you complete a matching activity and look at the activity on the web site under hidden segments section. On the other hand, arbitrary low quality segments that cover only part of the way remain.
I think Strava relies on a “popularity” as a critera, but their approach is flawed for two reasons.
1) This promotes arbitrary shorter segments just because shorter segments have a higher chance to be matched, especially if they are closer to trailheads in the case of trail running.
2) Strava relies on people starring or hiding segments as a way to upvote or downvote popularity, but that doesn’t really work either. Hiding can only be done on a website, and not in advance but only once you’ve matched a segment. But most people never use the website and some people don’t even know website exists. Also starring interferes with live segment syncing. I’d like to star a lot of segments but I can’t because that makes the list of synced live segments absolutely unmanageable. Once the number of starred segments exceeds a very small small number of live segments that can be synced to my watch, I essentially have no control on which starred segments are synced and which are not. So I end up not starring most segments that I’d like.
+26Another huge issue is that Strava’s approach makes it impossible to fix segments that become obsolete due to trails being rerouted, which happens regularly in my area. Old incorrect segments are obviously more “popular” based on Strava’s criteria, so the obsolete segments stick around. But any newly created segments that are intended to reflect the reroutings get deleted.
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