Segment Leaderboards by activity type

[RenaudGagnon]

This is my 2nd attempt to submit my ideal of making leaderboards filter activity types, the first one was unfortunately merge with another one about creating a new activity type which I used as reference... a great ideal nonetheless but wasn't the main reason for me writing here.

So here goes nothing:

Segment leaderboards are presently shown with anyone that as gone through the segment no mater what activity type. This is somewhat incoherent when different sports use the same segment (for example a runner and roadbiker obviously won't score the same time). This is why I'm proposing the ideal of segment leaderboards filtered by activity type. This would make segments more precise and would be an added value to leaderboards, competition wise firstly but also fun wise as it wouldn't mix apples and oranges!

Maybe this could be a user accessible filter, or maybe just automatically filtered down by the activity type chosen when recording a session?

Sorry for my english (I speak french). If you share my ideal please kudos this, Cheers!

[Jan_Mantau]

Maybe there is some misunderstanding involved but where on earth did you ever see mixed activity types in a segment? Such thing doesn't exist. In case you see an obviously bike ride on a running segment you should flag that activity because its using the wrong activity type.

[Jane]

Hello @RenaudGagnon 

Thanks so much for posting about this.  You'll be happy to hear that segments on Strava are already specific to activity types.  So for example a running segment will only show running activities and a ride segment will only show cycling activities.

You can find out more about how segments work here.

Thanks again for your post!

[RenaudGagnon]

Hi @Jane, thank you for the info and the kind reply. It's great to ear this I did not know that.

But still some segments I have created keep having people that don't belong in the leaderboard : I've created a MTB segment but am seeing people that were using «biking» as activity (which was the standard before MTB activity was created in Strava). Looking at link you sent me, should I understand when they say in the «Cyclists compete with cyclists», that roadbiking, mtb, fatbiking, ebiking and gravel biking are all considered the same? What about runners, is walking and running considered the same too? Or swimmers, will backstroke and butterfly stroke also be the same kind of activity segment wise??

Thanks for letting me know I am kind of lost in all of this really..

[anchskier]

@RenaudGagnon - there are multiple problems with trying to separate segment leaderboards by the various types of bikes.  First, most people do not actively manage which bikes they use when out riding.  Many either don't load their different bikes into Strava in the first place or don't take the time to make sure to update it from their default bike.  This means that you would have a lot of generic "rides" that were done on a MTB, gravel, road, etc... bike but just not properly designated.  You would also have a lot of miscategorized rides where someone who has their road bike as their default didn't bother to go in and change every MTB ride to their mountain bike.  This would just cause a ton of confusion in the leaderboards to the point that the data would be useless for actually determining a different.  

Another big issue is that you have over a decade of data already in the system that did not designate one activity type from another.  How would you deal with that?  

[Jane]

Hi @RenaudGagnon 

Thanks for your reply.  Ride segments include mountain bike, gravel, and road biking activities.  Please note that E-bikes are not included and have their own set of E-bike segments.  

Walks, runs and hikes each have their own set of segments.  

[RenaudGagnon]

@anchskier yes I understand the problems this could generate, thank you for pointing this out. People have been using the app with only one activity type for biking for a decade now and segments would have to be redone for every biking activity if you would have to separate them, I agree. Plus I don't think you'll be seeing any roadbikes going mtb any time soon or making any notable difference in the leaderboards, or vice versa with MTB on a roadbike segment!

On the other hand they've done this for e-bikes as @Jane mentioned afterwards (I already knew this but thank you for getting me the info 🙏), and the reason for this is that it wasn't fair to anyone not using a motor assisted bike. It worked out for them (e-bikes) + they have access to segments created for the generic bike activity.  So why not make it the same for MTB? 

The other problem I have is people that ride MTB segments also use them in the winter time with Fatbikes. I've previously wrote about this in another Ideal post and it was merged with another ideal post that was asking to add fatbiking as an activity type. Now if fatbiking was to be added, would it have the same segments no matter what biking activity you chose? Because then the problem would be the same again.

What I'm proposing was to keep the decade hold of data and keep showing the leaderboards with the activity types included, but add another tab in the leaderboard that only shows the one type activity chosen. I'm not sure but this problem of crossing activity types in segments quite probably doesn't only apply to biking, and this solution IMO would for sure be an added value to any activity type wanting a clean leaderboard without any activity mixups.

I hope this further clarifies my not-so-clear ideal, please let me know what you think. And also thank you for writing back!

[anchskier]

The situation with E-bikes was different than the situation with splitting MTB and other types of bikes.  E-bikes were never allowed to be loaded as rides previously, so there would only have been a small amount of erroneous data when they added the e-bike category.  

I see what you are saying, but I don't think you will get the result you are looking for if they implemented it.  They could add a way to sort by bike type in the leaderboards, but, as I mentioned before, there are a ton of people who don't bother to select their bike type when loading files so you would have a huge mix of equipment used in any one category.  I'm pretty detailed in wanting to track mileage on each of my different bikes, but even I forget to update the bike used sometimes, meaning my default bike will get assigned to rides I did on other bikes by mistake.  

[RosaireC]

Totally agree and would love that… I think it works for Running, Road Biking and a couple other sports but for SUP is combines the leaderboard with Rower, K1, C2, and all sorts of other paddlers… like Renaud said I’d love it if I could filter it to SUPers only… rowers and kayakers are way faster so it’s not relevant.