Leaderboard

[RH33]

Hello everybody

I have seen many fake leaderboard first places made by car . Some of them are hard to be noticed but if 150 km/h top speed is seen on flat surfaces cycling ,I mean...impossible .

Can you have in mind at least creating a parallel if not unique leaderboard for users that have powermeter or cadence sensors and somehow combine that creating an algorithm ? I know that not everybody has pwm and cad but subscribers do not like loosing places on a platform dedicated to leaderboard to somebody cheating .

A wind-speed algorithm can also help . I can call a kom with high speed wind from behind also a cheat .

[anchskier]

@RH33 - We have all seen the people who post rides or runs that are clearly false, whether it was intentional or accidental.  One thing you can do to help address it is to flag those activities.  It is really easy to do from the desktop version of strava (not available currently on the mobile verson).  I do it all the time to clean up the leaderboards in my area.

[RH33]

Yes I have seen flagging . In my opinion this is abusive . A person flagging has no proof that certain achievments are false or not . For sure 150 km/h on a flat terrain cycling is obvious but what if it is 70 km/h riding behind a truck ?

If I would be flagged for borderline activities I would consider it illegal since I pay for the service and my achievement would be deleted with no proof .

That is why I propose alternatives as above .

[anchskier]

While there is always a chance that someone could abuse the flagging system, that is very rare.  I flag a lot of activities, but they are all clearly false in one way or another.  Most are just someone accidentally leaving their GPS on when driving home after a ride, but others are e-bikers I know who loaded their rides as regular bike rides or things like that.  Flagging can be a legitimate way to clear up a majority of the errors on the leaderboards.  There will be some that are not obvious which will be hard for any kind of filter to address.  I've seen power meters on e-bikes, so just having a power meter wouldn't somehow make a ride a legitimate regular bike ride.  While you proposal would remove most of the fake/false activity achievements from the leaderboard, it would also remove all those who don't use a power meter or HR or whatever is determined to be a factor.  I only have a power meter on two bikes out of 5 that I race on.  I have a lot of KOMs on each of my bikes, so many without any kind of supplemental data such as power, cadence, or HR.  All of those kinds of things would be filtered out of your proposed leaderboard meaning that you would not have a very accurate picture of where you stand anyway.  You may have a KOM or top 10 on your filtered leaderboard, but there could still be a number of legitimate efforts that were faster that don't show up.  No real perfect solution in the big picture, just a lot of different ways to get partial fixes.

[Jan_Mantau]

I concur with anchskier and don't see much value in a leaderboard only for efforts with power oder at least cadence data. As he says, way too many legitimate efforts would be excluded and ebikes with these sensors would still be included.

I'm absolutely against calling KOMs with tail winds cheats as there is no written or unwritten rule against wind support. Tail winds and slip streams are completely normal occurrences in every ride and everybody can use them so nobody has an unfair advantage.

If you want a wind speed algorithm you can register at windsock.com and see the wind support in segment leaderboards. Of course that is only for wind, not for slip streams and it depends much on the reliability of the local weather data and doesn't take local wind breaking due to terrain, vegetation and development into account.

[RH33]

I do understand your opinions and agree partially .

Firstly the power leaderboard including e bikes may be true on what you are saying . I was only considering power meters in the pedals whose power will show less for e bike , tail winds or zero for car driving . What I was not considering are other types of pwm .This is a hard topic and my ideea is rough but I do think something can be done here but not sure how . There is a lot of data available and now only speed is used .

The wind algorithm however I fully consider that can be developed . Just look at ski jumping . They have a wind correction so no matter how long and correctly they jave jumped if wind supported them too much 1st place can be lost . This appeared a few years ago .

There are plenty of methods on general engineering that can help this one to be developed here also . One method is Dmaic especially the part on the MSA . A variety of cyclists on different bikes , weights , ages , wind conditions etc . participate to create a formula which will be generally applied by strava as a standard based on the wind your activity shows .

[anchskier]

@RH33 - Regarding wind, how would you address local wind conditions on a specific segment?  If I go for a 90 minute ride, I will encounter a lot of different local wind conditions along the way.  Most of those will not be recorded in any way by a weather station.  How would you account for that?  Just because the wind at the nearby weather station is blowing to the north at 20 mph doesn't mean it isn't shifted to the west at 15mph a half mile away following the contours of a hillside.  Your example of ski jumping can't really be applied.  That is done in a single location with accurate wind measuring devices located right where the event is happening.  In that case, you can actually get a real wind measurement at the moment the activity is happening and measure exactly what wind is impacting the athlete.  That is very different than trying to apply the same concept to a bike rider along an entire ride.  

[Jan_Mantau]

@RH33  With https://mywindsock.com  you can see exactly these wind calculations for the segment leaderboards after connecting it with your Strava account. But you have to live with the uncertainties anchskier has mentioned.

Example screenshot from that site (a negative wImpüact means a tailwind):

[Soren]

Hello @RH33 thanks for submitting your idea. 

It’s not entirely clear from your post what you’re suggesting here and the title doesn't represent a concrete idea either. We kindly ask that our members review our Ideas guidelines prior to submitting an idea, particularly the “What makes a good idea” section, to ensure that your idea is clear, concise, and can reach as many others as possible.

It sounds like you're asking for a different set of segment leaderboards that only include entries from activities that include 1) power data 2) candence sensors 3) wind speed/direction data -- is this a correct interpretation? If so, this would only apply to a very small portion of entries and to quote an important point from our guidelines:
"The amount of athletes that would be affected by the implementation of the idea plays a large factor in determining whether we will consider it. If a new feature would only be applied to a very small, specific number of people, it may not be the best allocation of our resources."

If you could clearly rephrase your idea, taking the guidelines into account, I can modify your post to include the changes and our team can review the idea to see if it qualifies as a submission. Thank you!

[Soren]

We will be archiving this idea due to its lack of clarity. I'd like to point out this new update regarding improvements on leaderboards: https://communityhub.strava.com/t5/what-s-new/we-re-improving-leaderboard-accuracy/m-p/10774

All feedback and comments are valued and appreciated, thank you for partaking in this discussion.