I'd guess you're probably right. I get the sense that we're in the "post-leaderboard" era of Strava. No one I ride with talks about or seems to care about segment leaderboards anymore. Maybe Strava doesn't either.

Serious question - why do you care?

Serious question in answer to your question - why do you care if they care?

To the poster, runs that I've flagged as in a vehicle worked. Haven't done anything with a bike lately.

When you flag it it immediately goes off the leaderboard and a notification is sent to the uploader with the option of changing the ride type or editing out the car bits. The person can also just say "it's legit" and then nothing happens.

So sounds like they did that. Flag it again and a Strava person will look at it.

I'm interested in the motivation of the OP, it interests me how people think and why they do stuff.
And your "answer" is not an answer, just turning it back on me.

I think Strava is a fun way to compete with the people around me. That kind of stuff breaks the system. There are a few segments I do care about and if someone in a car took them, I'd definitely go flag it

Okay, question for you then, how long have you been on Strava and why did you initially join? I feel like segments was one of the key reasons they grew the way they did and became so big among serious cyclists early. I used to love going for Strava segments and myself and numerous friends used to talk about gunning for them and used to do rides aimed just at that, it was a lot of fun and a way to add some competition in a sport we had no other way to compete in. I feel like now though as previous poster said we may be in a post segments era, starting at least when most of the segments became highly wind aided and had to be run under just the right conditions.

Not the OP, but I flag Strava rides every other week due to someone not turning their computer off when they hop in the car. Why? Because it takes two clicks and maintains an appropriate effort on the leaderboard. Even segments I've never done, like on race routes that I'm reviewing for an upcoming race, I flag blatant cheaters.

It's basically the same reason why I'd want someone cutting the course to be reported and DQed. When people are putting an effort into something, having someone else put no effort into that same thing but come out on top kind of sucks.

Whether or not that person cares, or the people on the leaderboard care, or a person on a forum cares doesn't really matter. There's a personal sense of justice involved, I think, regardless of whether or not that feeling extends to anyone else.

Because driving a vehicle is against their terms of use. Because you can "compete" in obscure or logistically difficult formats that would never happen on a weekend race. Because you can compete whenever you want. Because people who ebike or drive also care so much about strava that they unflag their activities so that they remain visible to their followers.

Not the OP either, but competing for the bragging rights to own certain segments can be quite fun among friends. Having an ebike or vehicle occupy the leaderboard is annoying if anything - why not flag it? Its takes like 10 seconds of your life.

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All of this.

Going for segments is fun, a great intensity workout, and definitely great for smacktalking amongst buddies.

I flag stuff pretty regularly.
Pretty much anytime I notice an “effort” that’s beyond mortal capabilities.

It seems to me that probably 97% of those bogus results are simply from people forgetting to turn off GPS after they get in their car.
More recently I’m seeing what appears to be e-Bikes taking gravel segments, typically uphill ones.

I’d like to think those people are just oblivious, and don’t realize what they’re doing.

It’s irksome that Strava’s “algorithm” doesn’t auto-flag this stuff, especially when it’s so obvious.

That’s one of the (many) things I like about MTB riding -
Hardly ever see BS KOM’s.
(Once in a blue moon you’ll see somebody get a GPS glitch “gift from the Strava gods”, but that falls under shit happens)

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float , hammer , and jog

I don't work for Strava- this is just my personal speculation as someone who has paid for the service for at least a decade if not a bit longer. I've moved all my analytics/planning over to intervals.icu, but still use Strava a social platform, which leads me to my hypothesis.

Strava as a company has taken a ton of VC cash over the years and still haven't had a liquidity event. They don't know how to monetize segments and leader boards, so that functionality has really been left to the wayside. They've recently announced changes to clubs: https://www.strava.com/rebuilding-clubs and I suspect there's a lot of pressure to partner with brands / monetize clubs so the investors can get their exit via IPO. Just my two cents.

Did Strava ever fix the issue with multiple segments over the same road? I feel that didn’t help; everyone making new segments up with their club name, or such. I always felt like the popular segments should just be geographically or generically named whenever many segments sat on top of each other in the sabe exact spot.

I am not on Strava or other social media for that matter.
As for why, I'd rather not go into my thoughts on these platforms; I'll just come off as a troll or a pretentious douche (or likely both)

Aside from the social aspect, if you care nothing for that, the most powerful, but under utililized aspects of Stava is actually the effect of so many athletes biking, running, even open water swimming that leaves heat map trails of previous athletes.

So you can see an open water swim that's heavily traveled. You can see a trail run in na remote area that has other runners. Making bike routes in new locations is especially beneficial.

I think Strava's data sets allow for a ton of potential.

Why would they pay people. Strava isn’t real life

We haven’t stopped racing because the data is on Strava saying someone else has already won.

Worry about your own square metre.

Yeah lurker was just being the dick he is.

I guess I've gotten on your nerve before as you've noticed and remembered my moniker. Neither yours nor the quality of you comments have ever distinguished themselves enough for me to notice or care. TTFN

Wonnk13 wrote:

the investors can get their exit via IPO. Just my two cents.

Strava hiked prices then laid off over 10% of the workforce earlier this year. According to this article raised over $100m in 2020.

https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/16/strava-raises-110-million-touts-growth-rate-of-2-million-new-users-per-month-in-2020/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9lbi53aWtpcGVkaWEub3JnLw&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAABt0LaibUGcmyxknO_GGVwaNVZ62U5xtlbpwVrGrTmg2UtN-OknOuQiE2b1Md_LX_e6OPiSsUdj0fMTCQYb8H87BCnN1SGvF2K8zuP8_4MUxUrv7C4A2llniLREuO4j8cFjrmRI5fhHPscLaBDazkDyEyGH_KSx3MteeQCoQ9lwm

It would not surprise me if they are lining up for a public sale at some point in the near future as investors will want their cash back. Hiking prices/reducing costs is usually a good sign something is in the pipeline.

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He who understands the WHY, will understand the HOW.

The uphill ebike is a death knell for some segments because they have no good way to know for sure versus “car”. They refused years ago requiring a HRM or PM to bag KOMs. I feel that’s a fair barrier to enter the game.

Amazon has "verified purchases" for reviews. Maybe Strava needs "verified data", e.g. they used a power meter. It does show up now if they used one, but would be nice if they had a slick UI feature to filter out everyone who didn't use a power meter.

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Professional interests in Genomics, Bioinformatics, Hardware/Software interfaces, sports interests are running from 800 to half marathon, sprint tri to half iron, cycling road races

https://brave.com/ - A safer and faster way to browse the web
https://www.strava.com/athletes/3757906

Exactly, they're a technology company and it would make a ton of sense of to be able to flag something on their end without needing user intervention... for instance a ride going up even a slight hill at 30mph or faster pushing 100W or less. It would seem setting things like that to autoflag should make sense... same goes for running dynamics. Someone posts something with a few sub 4 minute miles for a run around town... auto flag.

I digress, flag it on their end for obvious stuff and then send the uploader some communication... hey we flagged your "whatever", please let us know if we got it wrong.

Strava seems to have started some auto-flagging, but it's not accurate. I rode a very routine solo loop but did it harder (faster) than I usually do and Strava removed it from all the segments because "it detected it was drafting behind or in a vehicle" which wasn't true - which showed in my power readings. At the same time, it won't auto-flag someone's run that is clearly faster than humanly possible. I guess this is what happens when no human is looking at these things.

Yup, this.

Or, somebody who hits like dozens of segments during a ride, at MOP pace, and then suddenly turns into Cav for all of the segments at the end.
More annoyingly, when the above example is with segments all on gravel, and then they're suddenly hitting all-World speeds on roads. Supposedly on a gravel bike.
Wonder how that happened??
Well - DUH!!!!

There's a few road segment I have that are also on very heavily trafficked roads for riders returning home via car after riding.
So I'm getting UH OH!!! emails from Strava on those on the regular.
And when I then check, it's always somebody in a car, who forgot to turn off GPS.

Here's an example:
https://www.strava.com/segments/7640504



Lastly - It's kinda bizarre that Zwift (which is totally "imaginary") is far more strict with needing data (Watts AND HR) to back up results, than Strava is.


EDITED TO ADD - So, I just found one of these bogus efforts, that took a KOM away from me.
https://www.strava.com/segments/9662464?filter=overall


The woman who is (was, I flagged it) in 1st, clearly did a mtb (or maybe even a hike), and then drove home w/ GPS on.
Her only 2 lifetime segment results were both QOM/KOM's on this 1 activity.
And of course, no HR or watts data.
Grape job, Strava!!!!

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float , hammer , and jog