Remove Private Profiles From Challenge Leaderboards

[ChrisBerry]

It almost never fails that the top few spots on every cycling challenge leaderboard are held by people whose profiles are private, and the number of miles or the amount of elevation these people claim to have ridden are almost impossible to believe. Having your profile public so that everyone can see your activities and have the opportunity to flag them should be a requirement to particiapte in the monthly challenges. 

[Soren]

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

[TrueDisciple]

I agree with the problem, but I disagree with the solution. Some of us like to have a private profile, so we can post pics of our kids on some activities without the whole world seeing them. Only our followers, who we approve. 

Those who choose to have a private profile should not be excluded from monthly challenges. 

But public activities, even on a private profile, should be visible to everyone. I can see those activities if I look at a segment the person ran, so why not when I look at their profile? 

Images posted to activities marked as "Followers Only" or "Only Me" should remain only visible to those people, not to everyone. 

[anchskier]

@TrueDisciple - Maybe the solution could be more of a hybrid approach.  People who want to maintain their private profiles would be able to join the challenges and receive the prize/badge/etc... for completing it, but they would not be included in the leaderboard.  Only those with activities that other users can view and verify would be eligible for the leaderboard.  This would eliminate the issue of people loading fake activities that can't be verified due to their profile being private from filling up the top of the challenge leaderboards.  

[ChrisBerry]

@TrueDisciple that's a good idea. Anyone could participate in the challenge and earn the badge, but if you want to appear on the leaderboard your profile has to be visible. 

[willz]

@TrueDisciple 

What I have done is create a profile for my daughter, I can then add the photos to her activity which are private.

But my activities which may include the odd KOM, etc. are totally public.

I agree with @ChrisBerry unless profiles are set to public you cannot tell if achievements are genuine or not. Private profiles should not be a way to avoid scrutiny on public achievements.

[zecanard]

I vote for@TrueDisciple’s solution.

[Shant]

Where is the 100% emoji when you need it!

[mercerkg]

I found this topic as a recommended one from one called "Erroneous Challenge Leaderboards" that I started; which is a) related to the run climbing leaderboard and b) slightly more charitable about how this occurs.

For run climbing it seems fairly clear that some of the individuals at the top of the leaderboard (average Everest every day for a fortnight) have normal profiles that don't indicate "almost impossible" activity.

There are other topics pointing to fake gpx uploads for prizes and I've seen activities that look like a genuine device error/malfunction but (without having access, time or inclination to investigate) I'm suspicious that some errors relate to how data is pulled from profiles to leaderboards.

If I were going to fake (how sad) I'd probably go for data that my friends wouldn't think was "almost impossible", like climbing the height of Everest every day for a fortnight. I'd have to take the time off work to do that... <<joke>> 😂

...and, for the record, I think the vast majority of users have private accounts for very legitimate reasons including personal safety (I liked the fly-by feature but the scope for miss-use was almost limitless) and I strongly disagree with making leaderboards public accounts only. Entirely happy with a long ban from leaderboards, challenges, groups and a big red flag for any troll user who Strava deem to have cheated.

[Jan_Mantau]

@mercerkg I don't think the personal safety is a big concern here because the fake activities are visible to everyone else they wouldn't count for the leaderboard. The problem is that we don't have a simple way to find these activities if the account is private. So if it's too much restriction to allow public profiles only for challenge leaderboards the other option would be that Strava provides a link to all those activities.

[TrueDisciple]

How about this:

1. Only public activities count toward leaderboards.

2. Public activities are always visible when you click on a user's profile.

I think together, these two items would take care of the problem. What do the rest of you think?

[anchskier]

@TrueDisciple - the problem is that it would work for the challenges that are specific to a single activity, but many of the challenges are covering the total over a period of time, combining a number of activities rather than specific ones.  There is no activity to click on from the challenge leaderboards, just the profile.  If a private profile posts a public activity, you still would not be able to see it since you can't see the private profile.  

[mercerkg]

I'm curious as to whether "fake activity" is a common problem. I think I could figure out how to do this but if you ever see me at the top of a leaderboard it will because my GPS malfunctioned, I didn't switch off before getting in a car and haven't cropped the activity yet, or Strava did something wrong (I've previously checked an open profile at the top of the leaderboard that had no activities corresponding to the leaderboard stats/position).

In terms of privacy the issue is not the "fake activities".

I am sure that most people who use privacy settings do so for legitimate reasons:
1- I don't want someone to know where my expensive bike lives
2- There's someone in my life who I would rather did not know my movements
3- There are lots of people I don't know who I don't want to stalk me
4- My location is a secret (I seem to remember Strava had to change the heatmap because the location of a sensitive military base was very visible on it a few years ago)
5- I don't do Strava for bragging rights, followers or kudos; I just want to track what I do 

I've no idea how real any of these concerns are but I don't think the solution is to excluded people who want to be private.

Today is April 1st and the top of the run climbing leaderboard for April thinks that a runner with a private profile but has "normal" name and looks like a "normal" person has done 58,879m of climbing today. In 4th place is an open profile that climbed 15,463m during a 8km run; most in the first couple of minutes while their watch was (presumably) calibrating. A couple of his mates have joked that it's a lot of climbing (rather than accusing him of fraud...).

There are also a few in the top 20 who have activities indicating ultra length runs with huge climbs. My hearty congratulations on these achievements; on the balance of probability I believe them to be true. If any of them are fake, I fell truly sorry for those individuals.

[ChrisBerry]

@mercerkg I don't think it really makes any difference whether the activies are deliberately fake, a result of bad GPS data, or someone who just forgot to turn off their computer and recorded the drive home from the ride. In any of these cases, the result is the same when these activities show up in the top spots on the leaderboard. As long as the profile is private, no one else has a way of knowing whether it's real, fake, or erroneous. There needs to be a way for people to identify and flag these activities or the leaderboards are totally meaningless. 

[TrueDisciple]

@anchskier I hear you, but my proposed solution addresses that. Here it is again.

1. Only public activities count toward leaderboards.

2. Public activities are always visible when you click on a user's profile.

With #2 above, it would change how private profiles work. Right now, when I click on a private profile, I can see their name, location, tag line, how many people they follow and how many people follow them. I can't see any of their activities or photos unless I click "Follow" and they accept it.

With #2 above, I would be able to see their public activities, and none of their private ones. In Strava terms, I could see activities made visible for Everyone, but not the ones marked Followers or Only Me.

This makes sense to me. If I click on a Strava segment, I can see activities marked visible to Everyone, even if the profile is private. So why not if I click on their profile from a leaderboard? And why not if I just click on their profile from a friend's account?

==========

Another solution that would also work is this: Instead of a profile being public or private, allow each user to set whether they need to approve followers or not. That's the main reason I want my profile to be private. I want to choose who can follow me. 

I'm not as concerned about hiding my activities. I only set activities to Everyone if I don't mind "everyone" seeing them. If I want it to be private, for example if I started or stopped the recording at my house, or if I posted pictures of my kids, then I set it to either Followers or Only Me.

==========

It would be great if we had more options, as proposed in another idea, and we could assign followers to follower groups or labels. So we could have a group for "Local Athletes" or "Friends" and we could post activities that are only visible to them.

I think only activities marked as visible to Everyone should be included in leaderboards, that way others can see them and flag them. If you want to be on the leaderboards, those activities have to be viewable by the public. There's no other way to have the leaderboards mean anything.

[ChrisBerry]

Here is a perfect example. The top 2 guys on the leaderboard for the July Cycling Climbing Challenge both have private profiles and both have totally implausible elevation totals for 13 days. There was another person in 3rd place who had a single 5 mile ride with 188,000 feet of climbing that I was able to flag but I can't do anything about the other 2. The guy in 4th place did all of his elevation on a chairlift at a bike park.