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Why is Strava segment explore so rubbish?

by Leviathan
Thu, Aug 13, 2015 00:37
9

The closest the Segment Explore on Strava gets is about one mile square. Which means it will always contain some main road which has many overlapping segments with thousands of users. At the segments it lists seem to be by popularity it will only show the most boring arterial routes. Any segment that is away from the main road is not well used enough to show. Any interesting long routes are similarly swamped if you scale out. And finally if you do glimpse something you are interested in don't dare try to scroll over the page or zoom in as it will disappear straight away and you will never find the right scale map and position to make it show up. It seem like the only good way to find new segments is just to go out and potter around and see what you have done later.
There is a Segment Search tool, but you need to know what the segment is called, and people love to pick a funny name for their segments. I just want to see if there is something there 'There, no there, you stupid machine.' There should be some way of viewing all the segments passing through and area, though that could be hundreds perhaps. Or ranking your preference by most popular, least popular, fastest average speed, fastest KOM, most gradient.

[/moan]

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9 comments

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Judge dreadful | 9 years ago
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Strava, it's only good for lol's.

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Toro Toro | 9 years ago
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It makes a mockery if you think the point of the exercise is to put your name at the top of lists regardless of any actual cycling.

And if you think that, Strava's shortcomings are the least of your problems.

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Judge dreadful | 9 years ago
0 likes

Screw Strava. Have you heard of digital epo?

http://www.digitalepo.com

Makes a total mockery of the whole thing.

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fukawitribe replied to Judge dreadful | 9 years ago
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Judge dreadful wrote:

Screw Strava. Have you heard of digital epo?

http://www.digitalepo.com

Makes a total mockery of the whole thing.

Yeah I've heard of it, read about the finger print it leaves and how Strava try to deal with it. All very interesting but not particularly relevant to me as I use it, as do many, to keeps tabs on our own performance and ride history.. and maybe some friends and others.. and not as some massive global willy waving experience. YMMV

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Man of Lard replied to Judge dreadful | 9 years ago
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Judge dreadful wrote:

Screw Strava. Have you heard of digital epo?

http://www.digitalepo.com

Makes a total mockery of the whole thing.

Only if you give a monkey's chuff what other people are (ab)using it for. To track your own rides & progress it's simply one of many such tools you can employ (I actually use a combination of Strava - and some other tools analysing Strava data - and Endomondo)

If Bob Higginbottom claims to have ridden up a hill at a preposterously unbelievable rate for the 93 year old that he also claims to be, why would that exorcise (sic) me at all. The only person Bob is deceiving is Bob, everyone else just thinks he's an unspeakable ar**.

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Big Engine | 9 years ago
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It's strange, the rest of the site and app is quite well made, but this feature is useless.

Until they change it, - apologies if you already know this - you can save segments. That way at least you can easily view your favourites.

But yes, until I learnt not to use it, it used to frustrate me too! The upside is that Strava's free, and is an excellent tool.

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fukawitribe replied to Big Engine | 9 years ago
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Big Engine wrote:

It's strange, the rest of the site and app is quite well made, but this feature is useless.

Until they change it, - apologies if you already know this - you can save segments. That way at least you can easily view your favourites.

But yes, until I learnt not to use it, it used to frustrate me too! The upside is that Strava's free, and is an excellent tool.

Oh aye, I rarely use it and Strava is is generally very good and certainly excellent value for non-premium - it's just that this tool is so phenomenally poor I can't help wondering how they manage it, sort of perverse curiosity 1

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fukawitribe | 9 years ago
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To be fair to the OP, it is spectacularly shit - the disappearing segment on move and almost black magic furtling of scale to be able to see something you know is there being the icing on the turd cake for me. As a reasonably long time professional programmer I am constantly amazed that they can make something so essentially deterministic look unerringly like a random number generator - even the time estimates on the old Windows file copy / move dialogs looks stable in comparison.

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KirinChris | 9 years ago
0 likes

Welcome to Big Data.

Haystacks are great, but not if you want needles.

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