✓ Athlete-to-Athlete Direct Communication.

[SteveWayne]

Reposted here at request of Soren from Stava, thank you.  

I’d like the opportunity to communicate privately and directly with fellow Strava athletes e.g. gear and route questions, co-training opportunities, etc.; things that are too detailed for the comments section. Creating, integrating, and “policing” an internal Strava personal messaging system is daunting, but what about Strava allowing an email sharing “opt in”? 

Any athlete could allow conversation through their Strava verified sign-in email but it would be hidden behind a “contact this athlete” button on Strava. Only the receiving athlete would see the sending athlete’s email and they could choose to reply or not reply and continue the communication off the Strava website within their personal email (gmail, yahoo, etc).  The general Strava audience would not see any personal email, just the “contact this athlete” button—unless it is grayed out because the athlete chose to not partake in this form of direct communication.  

What are your thoughts and ideas please? Thank you. 

[Maybenaught]

I love the idea of having some sort of direct/private communication option added! I've connected and reconnected with people through Strava and when coordinating a meet-up weve always had to move over to Facebook messenger to trade contact info more privately first.

[marcb]

This is a great idea. Important to consider how new conversations are controlled to minimize abuse and harassment.

A report option should be easy and anonymous. Shadow banning should result after a few reports, especially as there are anonymous accounts even if they are email verified. This doesn't mean they are linked to real known people.

Also DMs should be able to turn off for non-followers and even followers.

Not sure what opt-in level should be, but maybe ask all users to toggle them. Silent turn off of fly bys was good, but not sure that level needs to be same for DMs.

[stephen]

I like this idea but I can't see this actually being implemented. You'd have to have it super locked down because there are already people who post creepy stuff in public comments so it'd be even worse in private. Big potential for abuse/spam and it adds to something else the strava team would have to moderate/monitor.. and it doesn't look like they have the bandwidth to monitor/moderate anything anyway outside of the community managers that mod this forum. 

[SteveWayne]

Thank you for your comment, Stephen.  

Why would the Strava team have to moderate the suggested plan, or have it “super locked down” please? 

First, Strava athlete-to-athlete contact would be voluntary, so if a person such as yourself had concerns, they simply would not opt in (much like Fly-Bys now…if concerned, don’t opt in).  

Second, no email address is ever share publicly to generate abuse.  Even if a person clicks your “contact athlete” button (assuming you have “opted in”), you the recipient see the senders message but they still do not see your email…their message was emailed to you by Strava directly. You can choose to respond to their email or not respond and trash it or disregard it. This is how most online messaging works from forums…the forum itself does not have an internal messaging service, they just forward messages. 

Third, the recipient has two ways to completely block the sender: either (a) block them completely in your email server (gmail, yahoo, etc) and you’ll never see another email from them, or (b) block them on Strava itself and you will never see them, their workouts, and they cannot see you or your workout feed ever again.  

[Brendan]

Of course this has the potential for spam but it’s easily dealt with: make it possible to report people, which could result in an account ban. Is being a creep worth losing access to your Strava account? I hope not, so it should be a solid deterrent. 

And as others have suggested, make the initial message work like other messaging apps: you can message anybody but you can’t see if the receiver has seen the message until they accept the message request or reply. 

[tranquillity]

I don't think we need an athlete-to-athlete-conversation. I think it would case a lot of spam.

If I want to contact someone, I can write a comment in an activity. We can change numbers and can communicate via Signal or iMessage or whatever. 

Strava should not end up as another messenger.

[Ill_Jimador]

If a full messaging feature is too complicated to implement, maybe providing some way to privately share contact information (if both party's approve) with another athlete might be easier to build in?

Maybe you could allow athletes to enter in their preferred method of communication (phone, email, 3rd party messenger app) into their accounts and give the option to share it with another athlete that they follow.  And then that recipient athlete can choose to accept it or not 

I think most people would prefer that to having to put your phone number or social link in a comment where it could be seen by anyone with access to the activity. 

[kartoone]

Another option would be to have the "community hub" be the place where that communication happens. Strava to strava chats initiated somehow through the comment system or contact button. Perhaps during first contact, messages can ONLY be text until the user has approved receiving fully formatted messages (including pics) from the other user. In general, I would love to see a tighter integration between the "community hub" and Strava itself.

[Maybenaught]

@kartoone I love that idea! It does seem like this is very separate from Strava itself. 

[drtollett]

@tranquillity And post my contact info in a workout comment? No thank you. 

[tranquillity]

After getting in contact delete the comment. No problem. 

Strava is for sport, not for messaging. 

[drtollett]

@tranquillity Some people get the comments in minutes... others days. Posting private info in a feed is sloppy and careless, and you still need to remember to go delete your sensitive information. That is, in fact, a problem.

And even though you keep stating Strava is for sport (whatever that means), not for messaging, the very reason we would be messaging others is related to our workouts. Whether that's to a friend to meet up for a run, asking a shop a question about where they meet for a ride, or letting your club know you got a flat on the return trip south, it could always be valuable. I am part of a cycling club that using group texts to plan our frequent rides, and it's often very messy with people joining/leaving the group. Hopefully a nice messaging alternative (like Meta did with Messenger) would work much better. 

If you don't agree or have your own methods, that's ok. Just ignore this idea thread and kindly move along.

[BionicToast4]

Would love to see a feature like this added! I've moved to Japan, and taken up cycling here. So I don't really have anyone to ride with. One of the reasons I got Strava was to meet other people doing the same thing as me in the same area, and it feels against the culture to say "Hey lets ride together sometime" in a comment section... Also it would be nice to ask people who know the area about routes, and nice stops along the way!

[Johnny]

This!