Limit how many Clubs a single user can join to reduce "club spamming"

[mattalexg]

There is a subset of users who seem to join as many Clubs as they can, which results in many/most public Club leaderboards being cluttered with activity by people with no real relationship to the club (e.g. a regional/city-oriented Club whose leaderboard is always dominated by activity from other countries).

For example, the user currently topping the neighborhood running group I was just looking at is a member of around 575 Clubs and records activity exclusively in a different state. I am not sure why these users do this, but it degrades the overall Clubs experience for everyone.

Clubs should not have to be made Private to avoid this, as that places an undue moderation burden on the Club admins and discourages organic community growth. There needs to be a middle ground for Clubs that are in between the small, tightly-managed Private groups of real-life friends on one end, versus national & worldwide "free-for-all" public Clubs on the other.

It would help reduce the impact of these "club spammers" if Strava were to cap the number of public, leaderboard-enabled Clubs each user is allowed to join, and retroactively remove users from all but that number of Clubs if they are already over the limit.

Users could still be free to join as many Private & partner/brand-oriented Public Clubs as they want. 

[Soren]

Thanks for submitting your idea. It has been reviewed by our moderation team and is now open to voting.

[RMSouthAfrica]

I agree. Also add a feature to allow users to unfollow/leave a group with the option to inform the owner or not. 

[François]

I agree that measure to reduce "club spamming" would from my point of view be beneficial to the community.

I also don't see the value or benefit of such behave for users, so in addition a deeper investigation of the primary objectives of such "club spammer" should be done by Strava. Maybe, this way of subscribing to thousand of club allow "something" for these users that is not offered by the actual Strava experience ? To the very least this could shed some light on this strange behaviour.

[rrajao]

Back when I ran a local bike club in Strava, we had to approve new members to avoid exactly that.

Another solution would be adding an option to check a user's location before they joined a club. For example, a club for Madrid cyclists would only accept members located in or around Madrid. 

[ChrisBerry]

Clubs have the potential to provide an important social functionality that Strava doesn't really have compared to other platforms. For instance, I would love to have a club for people who ride fixed gear road bikes and use the posts feature to communicate with those people. Unforunately, it's impossible to create a public club that doesn't immediately get clogged up with random people who have nothing in common. I was invited to join a local gravel riders club yesterday and the top spot on the leaderrboard was a guy from Indonesia who only rides on Zwift and belongs to hundreds of clubs all over the world.  

[vagner_acorja]

Club spamming is bad for the community. I check the leaderboard of my club every week - I like to see my progress and the progress of my friends - and already kicked some spammers when they show on leaderboard... but I think, it's not a good solution.

[vagner_acorja]

I'm thinking about the spammers (maybe I'm not the only). The club I moderate, I think, has more than 30 spammers on club Leaderboard this week, people who have more than 1000 clubs!!! Sometimes more than 4000!!! What!? 

So I came up with two ideas:
- if a user joins more than eg 100 clubs he (or she) is not eligible for any club's ledearboard (or not eligible for more tham 100). Maybe, verified athletes would not have this restriction.
- Or add power to the admin to restrict some user of apear in the ledearboard... 

I'll give one example: last year, before I become admin, I was "fighting" with a friend to stay in the first place of my club, just for fun... but in the end of the week, out of the blue, someone that have more tham 1000 clubs, made the first place. The guy (or girl), not even was brazilian, or talk portuguese, probably not even notice. 

I like to check the ledearboard, but would be great see people that I know (and don't run very long distances) there, but with so many spammers it became a little hard. As admin, I don't like to kick people from the club, but would be great have the power of restric some users of appear in the ledearboard.

[geoffpowell]

I've noticed clubs I considered joining and clubs I am a member of are full of riders who have no link to either club. There seem to be many people who just collect clubs. This is a pointless exercise and to my mind ruins the whole point of having clubs that allow one to connect to someone who shares a connection. Surely no-one needs to be a member of more than say 25 clubs. I have just joined the club for my new bike brand and find that after posting my local cycling club now has "club collectors" from there infiltrating their group. Why would a mountain bike rider from Brazil need to be a member of a cycling club in a small town in the UK that he has no link to whatsoever? Or be part of the "This Girl Can" group, a UK government initiative to get more women and young girls to take up sport?

[geoffpowell]

Don't know why "Vinson Massif" appears under my Strava name, that's no my real name or where I live.

[Jan_Mantau]

Yeah, these club collectors are a scourge. Especially when they are occupying the club leaderboards of some winterly area with their good weather rides.

This "Vinson Massif" (and now "Shkhara") under your name is Strava's creative and a bit strange idea of ranking members by mountains only a few people have ever heard of.

[DL_44]

I agree with this idea. 

- Allow members to be able to designate 5 clubs as their "primary club" - where their stats show up on the leaderboard. 

- Any club that is not their primary club, they can join as an 'observer' but they are omitted from the leaderboard.

[geoffpowell]

Agree with DL_44's suggestion.

[Julie22W]

Yep - all for it

[ardoin]

Came here because the small area clubs I belong to have leaderboards often clogged with rando club spammers. What are they even trying to do? I too would be curious what benefit there is from club spamming. But definitely should be limited - DL_44 seems to have a pretty low impact suggestion.

[Megido]

I understand your point of view. Some athletes may see joining over 200+ clubs on Strava as a way to show off (bragging right), but I'm not sure what benefits.