Automatic recommendation of the actual start and end points of a group activity.

[BerettaVexee]

Use case: During group cycling rides, many participants reflexively start GPS recording as soon as they leave the house and stop it at the door on their way back.

When Strava detects a group ride, it could be interesting to automatically suggest splitting the activity at real start and finish of the ride. I think it could be done with current data (location correlation, still period). This would make it possible to have more representative data, such as average speed, since it wouldn't take into account the "commute" part of the ride. This function could take the form of a suggestion to  split the activity, or to hide part of the activity. I think the majority of athletes would be happy to be able to compare themselves easily with the other participants just on the section corresponding to the group activity. 

This could be a way of including a limited, assisted version of the activity breakdown functions in the mobile application. The interface could be very simple "We think your group outing started here and ended there. Trim, hide, do nothing?".

This would marginally increase confidentiality by making it easier to conceal where you live. This could be useful for runners and other sports.

[Jan_Mantau]

If you want to conceal where you live you can setup privacy zones around your home. If you want to cut the part of the activity that doesn't belong to the group activity you can crop it manually.

I don't think an automated suggestion for cropping would work in most cases because these "real" start and end locations would be to ambigous to compute. Some people come to the group activity together or many people leaving the group activity early because of group splitting, defects or they are just near at home and so on would confuse the matter too much.

[BerettaVexee]

I don't think that's really a problem. When I look at my last group activities, the majority of participants arrived 10 minutes or more early and stayed at the end for several dozen minutes to congratulate each other or have a beer. So there are two clear periods of inactivity at the beginning and end of the activity, common to the majority of participants, in the same place. Making this optional in the form of a suggestion helps to limit the effects of erroneous detection, while making it easier to cut out periods that can be complicated or impossible to do on the mobile app. Strava is already able to easily detect participation in a group activity. This is just taking detection a step further.

I'm familiar with the privacy options, but I rarely use them when I'm in a hotel, for example. It can be useful when running a race away from home.

[Soren]

Thanks for submitting your idea. It has been reviewed by our moderation team and is now open to voting.
In addition to Jan's point, I'd like to share that you can adjust the default privacy preference for new activities uploaded to your account, such as hiding the start/end points of your activity, regardless where it takes place.

You can find information on this setting here. For even more information on all of our privacy controls, please visit our Privacy Center and take the time to ensure your selections in Strava represent your intended experience.