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Segment Leaderboard Integrity

Ian
Elbrus

I have seen several people raise concerns about integrity of Segment leaderboards, mostly due to the wrong Activity type (using an E-bike on a "ride" or a bike on a "run") or leaving Strava running at the end of an Activity and hence recording a subsequent car journey.

For what it's worth, here's my approach to trying to help maintain Segment integrity in my area.  In the last 5 years I have attempted about 6200 bike Segments, all within a few miles of where I live.  I use the excellent VeloViewer companion for Strava which allows me to get lists of all my Activities and Segment efforts.  It allows me to export data to a spreadsheet and so I can have a spreadsheet of all the Segments I have attempted, complete with my leaderboard position, best time, KOM time, etc.  Generally the Segment data is very good with very few suspect KOMs.  Roughly once per week I download the data to a spreadsheet and do a comparison with equivalent data from the week before, in particular looking for changes in KOM times.  This week, for example, it showed about 30 Segments had improved KOM times compared to last week.  About half of these looked genuine performances (small improvements, high heart rates, and credible max speed or power).  The other half were from 4 Activities that all looked suspicious - such as multiple KOMs with large improvements, no heart rate data and incredible sustained high speeds (e.g. 55 mph uphill).  Hence by flagging these Activities I have hopefully made a contribution to maintaining the integrity of the Segments in my area.

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Jane
Moderator Moderator
Moderator

Hello @Ian 

Thanks for sharing that information.  Veloviewer has been around for quite a while and we know many Strava Athletes find it useful.  Here's an article on how to use the activity flag tool, so anyone reading your post can get more information on that if they need to.

Sounds like you have quite a few KOMs!  Thanks again for sharing these helpful tips.

 


Jane (she/her)
STRAVA | Community Hub Team

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10 REPLIES 10

Where is the autoflag? Why do we need to flag segments set at 50 - 100- even 150+ miles per hour? Strava is a data company... this has been asked about for years.