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anchskier
Denali
Status: Open To Voting

Activity flagging and the idea of community moderation works fairly well, but there are always ways to improve it.  Here are a few ideas to consider or where I feel the current system is lacking in some form:

1.) Reset people's ability to flag activities at midnight, local time.  Currently, it is set up to reset 24 hours after the last flag was applied, which means you are always guessing when you will be allowed to flag another activity the next day.  There is no indicator telling you whether or not you will be able to flag an activity until after you have gone through the entire process and try to submit it, only to find out that you are still temporarily blocked.  This is a big waste of time.  Just reset it at the same time every day so it is obvious.  Another idea is to have some type of counter showing how many flags you have remaining in a day and/or when they will reset.  A note when you apply a flag that states something like "You have 5 flags remaining today" and/or "Your flagging ability will reset at 8:00am EST on XX/XX/XXXX."

2.) Nominate or allow local ambassadors who have more liberal flagging limits or abilities.  These people can be ones who submit an application and can be vetting by the location of the bulk of their activities over the past X number of years.  This will greatly help to clean up segments if someone is willing AND ABLE to flag more than 5 or 10 activities at a time.  

3.) Have a graduated limit to flags per day.  The more active the person is on Strava, the more flags they are allowed.  New members only get maybe 3 or 5 as a limit, but long-standing members get up to 100 (or whatever number works best).  These limits can be reduced if it is shown that they are abusing the system, determined by a percentage of flags applied that get overruled or otherwise proven incorrect.

27 Comments
Dobby1990
Shkhara

Made a similar post https://communityhub.strava.com/t5/strava-features-chat/flagging-a-review/m-p/24331#M4011

Would be good for Strava to actually review the process

Igor_Alves
Mt. Kenya

Kinda late to this thread but let me tell you guys that best way to do it since strava seems to not care about making the flagging better. In my city like almost every other we have a big avenue that it's focused on physical sports and it's plagued with people on bikes recording their activities as running ones or just GPS glitches that they don't care to delete it from leader bords. Today i flagged 15 people out of a 400m running segment that had a time of 38 or minus seconds faster than the world record lol, but after the strava limited me I just went in my brother's account and finished the rest of the flagging because I always do a full explaining and It takes quite a while to flag everyone and it sucks to write a full paragraph just to know that you reached your limit and just lost your response that you spent like 5 minutes writing and explaining. 

TLDR: Just change accounts when you reach the limit and finish it

ARoger
Pico de Orizaba

Two examples of clear car activities done in the last 7 days. Any half-decent auto-flagging shuld have picked these up:

  1. https://www.strava.com/activities/10876486559/overview - Reached 103 km/h in a 3% slope
  2. https://www.strava.com/activities/10872557248/overview - Reached 89 km/h in a 3% slope

 

 

 

L_McLoskey
Pico de Orizaba

I HATE that so many KOMs on Strava are obviously done on eBikes or in cars, with speeds of 50, 60, 80mph, etc.
I saw two today with max speeds of 93 mph and 111 mph (🙄), and came across a user with a bunch of KOMs and Top-10 segments who states in his own description that he rides an eBike!! Strava should catch these automatically and delete them.
I don't have time or desire to sit around playing Policeman and flag every obviously BOGUS KOM and car/eBike ride I see.
I'm not a "KOM-chaser" or obsessed with stats, but this is annoying, invalidates the entire KOM and segment stat system, and turns people off. This has been a Strava problem for *years* now, and it seems pretty clear that they have NO interest whatsoever in implementing what should be an easy software fix. Grrrrrr.

TomBraider
Mt. Kenya

Bump.

I'm here because I have created a new segment and its flooded with people who have left their GPS on in their cars. Most are genuine errors, but it is taking me weeks to flag them all. Its a walk segment and I am so far only at people averaging 2min miles.... On a Walk!

chriswood635
Mt. Kenya

I see Strava still doesn't want to give users the ability to flag more than 10 activities a day (?) I just looked at the Half Marathon leaderboard and not a single activity in the top 10 were genuine runs. But I've reached my limit for today, so the rest of the table is just useless junk. Brilliant. THIS is why I don't pay for Strava.

tyleha
Mt. Kenya

Cleaning up a new segment or a leaderboard of car rides takes way, way more than 10 flags. If Strava wants the community to police its platform, fine, but then give us superior moderation tools, more flags in a day, etc etc. 

KBowen
Shkhara

I see this is not flagged as "Open to Voting". How and where can I vote?

Also, does anyone know why this 10 flag limit was imposed? I used to just be able to do a big clean-up day on segments when I had time. Now I spend days at a time trying to clean segments 10 at a time, and having to set reminders to start again the same time the next day. It's super frustrating as the main reason I use Strava is to compete on leaderboards.

tnicoluci
Mt. Kenya

I really agree with the suggestions here but I think it could go even further:

1) There must be a way to auto-flag activities in a vehicle and e-bikes. I am not a tech savvy person but with Google popping up ads based on what I just talked to my wife about, it seems doable 🙂

Phone devices are known to generate false KOM and timings, so this would fit in here. If it does'nt have HR or Power, it does not get accounted for.

2) Official leaderboard is ONLY for serious riders with HR and/or Powermeter supporting data. It might sound like a entry barrier - and riding bikes don't have to be expensive - but once it becomes performance oriented (i.e. leaderboards make sense), it has to be serious and data based. HR and Power access is a lot more affordable today. Phone devices are known to generate false KOM and unrealistic timings as they are inaccurate, so this would fit in here. If it does'nt have HR or Power, it does not get accounted for.

3) It would be nice to have these identified amabassadors as approvers of oficial segments (famous climbs, relevant segments for s specific area, which a dedicated/avid rider would know based on his workouts and rider community). Like in Rio de Janeiro, there is 1 segment that matters for the famous "Vista Chinesa", but infinite segments created. Just an example.

anchskier
Denali

@KBowen - It should be open for voting.  I can see the kudos count (currently at 37).  I can't vote since it was my own idea, but you should be able to.  Just click the thumbs up button on the original post.

starfruit
Shkhara

The real thing I can't figure out is why the algorithmic flagging or warning of users ride categorization isn't more prevalent or enacted yet.

It's simple programming, simple data analytics - like what you'd think a software developer would actually be keen to do rapidly to keep their platform relevant.

Duffman
Mt. Kenya

Some really great ideas here, things I've been saying for a while.  First off, regions need a moderator/ambassador to clean up and approve trail segments.  There are so many inaccurate or segments within segments it is annoying.  Sure, I guess I could go in and hide all the lame segments but why not have a more polished product.

I also really like the official leaderboard idea.  If you are going to offer leaderboards that should at least be legit.  Not be littered with e bikes pretending to be regular bikes, or riders with 5 year old iPhones/watches that are conserving their limited battery power by throttling the resources they expend on apps like Strava.  You can spot these devices by the users with straight lines in the data, or data that jumps around all over the place.  Teleporting them through the segment finish line with times they could never achieve on their own.  Limiting the official leaderboard to times recorded with dedicated devices and HR would go a long way to cleaning everything up.

Why hasn't strava done this?  Fear of alienating new and less serious users.  Its all about the dollars...