Mt. Kenya

[AdamDB]

I wonder why everybody here lives around Mt. Kenya? I am a very proud neighbour of Mollekensberg (BE - Herent), Sigarenberg (BE - Winksele) and many other hills that are absolutely massive compared to human size.

So I'd like to change my profile location to one of these epic hills in my own backyard,
that also reach for the stars, just as much as Mt. Kenya.

Greetings from Belgium; 
land of epic hills (compared to human size).

[AdamDB]

Ah thank you, I missed that information.
Makes total sense now. 🙂

[Scout · Accepted solution]

Hey @AdamDB, 
Thanks for posting. The location comes from our ranking system. 

The more you participate, the higher you will climb. The first 6 ranks are passive ranks. As soon as you create your first post, you will jump over the passive ranks to the first active rank, Mt. Kenya, and then work your way up the ladder from that point forward.

For a complete guide to our ranking system, check out this post. 

[dricherby]

I think this feature is confusing and unhelpful. I'd even go as far as saying that it should be removed.

As indicated by the multiple threads asking what it's all about, users do not understand that the random locations printed under people's names is actually a ranking system, and they waste their time trying and failing to change their location from Mount Kenya to where they actually live. Even now that I know it's a ranking system, it still makes no sense -- labelling posts with the names of mountains half of which I've heard of doesn't help me determine whether one user is more "senior" than another. Even considering mountains that I know of, I certainly couldn't place e.g., Ararat, Denali, Elbrus and Kilimanjaro in increasing order of height. Can you? Can the average Strava user? Can even 10% of Strava users? Unless the majority of Strava users can accurately perform that task, the labels are useless. This isn't a mountain climbing site, so basing the ranking system on mountain-climbing knowledge is a poor choice.

Why does there even need to be a ranking system at all? It's just a proxy for number of posts and/or number of Kudos, so why not just give that information directly? Telling me that a user has received, say, 150 Kudos for their posts here tells me that people find their posts accurate and helpful. Printing the name of some random mountain below their name tells me nothing, especially since Strava thinks it's "more fun" to not say what the rankings actually denote (per the post you link).

At the very least, there should be a mouse-over for the ranking that explains what it is, and/or the ranking should be a hyperlink to the post that explains it.