Remove 'manually completed' feature

Based on this comment, I’m reconsidering this feature’s existence:

If I can build a suitable Street moderation system: flag for deletion with those being reviewable by Striders (and not just myself), as well as the ability for Striders to suggest modifications like new/moved/deleted Nodes (and also reviewable by Striders, and not limited to myself).
Then I think I’d be on board with removing this whole ‘manual completion’ thing.

What do you think?

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I think a node modification tool would be nice.

I have a street like CityStrides where i can’t get the last 3 nodes, because it’s a gated area owned by some rich dude who don’t like to share :grinning:
I don’t really like the “Completed: Manually” designation. I ran 67% of the street, but i feel like a cheater :worried:

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I agree with the removal of the manually completed feature as long as the node modification tool is widely usable, not just by a few people who may never get through all of the backlogs or if only someone who has completed a street can approve the mod, since in the smaller towns, like the one I’m in, there are very few people even using the app, so my suggestions may never get approved. Thanks for continuing to try to improve these features to make the completability [is that a word?] of more towns possible!

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I think this is a good call - would agree with users being able to flag and delete, but should keep a log for each city - a 4th box on the Cities page (Streets Left, Streets Run, Striders, “Streets Removed.”

That way you can see what was removed - potentially bring it up for debate or have a majority voting policy (1/2, 2/3, whatever), so that if only one or two users think it should be removed but 3 others think it’s valid, it stays runnable.

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If you move forward with this idea, then we’ll need to have some sort of community standard as to what constitutes a “runnable” feature.

Do we include areas not open to the general public (gated communities, military bases)?
Do we include paths and trails vice streets?
Do we include things that are technically accessible but not streets, like the local McDonalds?

Etc…

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One type of area I recommend against removal is military bases. I have relatives in the armed forces and was able to complete the base near me. On a separate occasion, I ran in a 5K that passed through the same base. I also know that the base offers event space and other public events so it’s not totally off-limit.

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I vote that this feature should go. There’s one guy in my town who is at 100% complete but most of his streets are marked manually complete. Feels like a cheat.

And indeed, you’d need a system to deal with the unrunnable objects. I’d propose:

  1. Create an ‘Removed objects’ bucket
  2. Move an object to this bucket if someone flags it
  3. Remove an object from this bucket if someone runs it
  4. Removed objects do not count against the completeness percentage
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Interesting variation, however #3 would cause un-runnable stuff to stay on (return to) most people’s lists just b/c one runner was willing to trespass or lived in a gated community or etc etc.

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True. In that case, flag it again.
Perhaps require the number of flags to exceed the number of runners for that object.

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some thoughts

firstly I think finetuning would be fine if you near 100% of a city. Not may people come ever so far. So only a few people will realy benefit a small percentage from it

secondly I sometimes ‘run/walk’ a building for instance today I run a path over the public playground of the school. Then the School (=building) is flagged and there are no street(names) associated with it. In this example a building is ok.

Thirdly, the nodefinding is a very big help to cover the ground.

That said I would be happy to flag impossible nodes like nodes on the highway, railroads and water…

******* Just flagging them so they won’t count for the person who flags them me is the most easy and best solution maybe ******

Besides some people think maybe otherwise about impossible nodes. I run myself some impossible nodes for instance, had a lot of fun and (barely) live still :slight_smile:

I totally agree with removing the manually complete.
This will even the playing field for all striders, even if it means that a city cannot be completed to 100% because of the common issues with canals, building etc. tilll all these features have been removed. One city may have a maximum obtainable completion rate of 97% but at least that will be the same for all striders. Now I see the strider that is around the same level as me having some manually completed features, making the comparison between us unfair if i don’t use the manually completed.

The problem with just removing and not doing anything else is the node hunter feature will totally overwhelm some areas near highways, etc.

Maybe manually completed notes could be marked blue? Then the highways are blue nodes and you could still find the little overpass in red nodes that you still want to run.

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Alternatively there could be two scores, one including manually completed streets, which may take you to 100% in your city and one without manually completed streets that you can use to honestly compare with other striders in your city.

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My only hesitation with removing the manually completed feature is that then there’s no way to mark off a street you’ve run if your GPS dies, which has happened to me a couple of times. Just because there’s no proof doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

I see hitting all the nodes in town as a personal goal, not a competition with anyone so I really don’t care if someone else uses the feature. I have used it to mark off nodes that were not runnable, such as building, rivers and parks, just get the red nodes off my screen when planning future routes.

Why would someone bother to sign up and log in just to “cheat”? If they do, that’s their issue, not mine.

7Lenny7 ->. I respectfully disagree with your comment. The proof of completion lies in the LifeMap. If there is no map, and a street is marked as “complete”, it give the impression that a person has cheated. The data is used in features which compare to others on the site (i.e. leaderboards, number of streets complete, etc). One of the ways I’ve dealt with this in the past is to run the workout again to capture a valid run.

There are some valid reasons for manually completing today, including but not limited to streets that can only be partially run, gated communities, posted (no trespassing), etc, so I would love it if there is a way to come up with a valid list of streets that can be run by all. Everything outside of streets would be still be displayed on our LifeMaps (Trails, parks, buildings, etc).

The point of contention seems to be by those who want to top the Leaderboards and don’t want the Manual Completers to get easy credit. Fair enough. What if there were a profile flag available for those of us who don’t care about the Leaderboards to keep the Manually Completed feature by opting out of all Leaderboard type lists and our % completes wouldn’t matter? If the Opt Out flag was cleared later, then we’d have to acknowledge a warning prompt that our manual completions would be wiped out. I would love it if the nodes all lined up and manual completions weren’t necessary; however, in some parts of towns, even the public roads aren’t always able to be straight up completed. Maybe the feature to start editing nodes/streets is close enough to complete that this idea won’t be needed? :slight_smile:

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James, based on the feature still existing it seems like this wasn’t executed.
Apologies if this is a dead thread, but I’m wondering why the solution isn’t just for people to edit OpenStreetMaps, then when CS updates, so too do the nodes and associated streets.

Do you regularly update the OSM input to CS?

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There’s no dead thread in this forum! :smiley:
I haven’t written the data update process yet, so edits in OSM don’t make it into CityStrides. They will though, so you’re right about the ideal process.

I probably won’t remove the manually completed feature until/unless I can get the data update process down to something relatively fast. Without thinking about it a ton, I think I’d be happy with quarterly updates - I’d remove this feature then.

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I don’t know…I’ve run a lot of stuff and marked about 25 streets manually completed for a big variety of reasons. Private roads, bad GPS signal on a run, safety/feasibility of running it. I’m not sure you can simply capture this all on OSM. I think making people edit OSM is also not realistic. If some people want to change OSM, or trespass or run on a very unsafe road to get their nodes thats on them. I was actually going to suggest letting users select a reason for a node being marked manually complete from a drop down: safety, private, bad gps, not a road etc We started a local heatmapping facebook group and I posted a pic of a traffic circle with missing nodes on half of it and asked who would try it. The response was either are you insane thats dangerous I hope you have good health/life insurance or I would do it at 5am when traffic is light.

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