Core Idea
Ability to create a Crew which provides several layers/types of interactions automatically - work together to finish cities, compete inside the Crew to have the most completed streets, and compete against other Crews in cities.
I think the Crew vs Crew competition can be on City, Region, Country, and global scale. Some of it can be automatic (very similar to the User lists throughout the site), and some of it can be more “event” based (like the monthly AMSAP Challenges, but on a Crew level).
Old discussions on the idea have all been merged into Old discussion thread for Club / Crew / Group / Team
I want to start this conversation anew based on this post.
Naming
In gaming, they tend to use “clan” (which I hate). This doesn’t line up with anything in the running world, but “club” does. The super-generic “group” doesn’t do much to invoke feelings of fun and exploration. Then “team” feels a bit too competitive. I recently learned about Running Crews, and the differences between crews and clubs sparked my interest. They seem to be a bit more community-focused, might have a “start together finish together” approach to their outings, and can focus a bit more on the adventure of running. Those aspects all feel like they overlap with CityStrides quite a bit.
I think I’m leaning towards Crew, with the risk of it being a bit lesser-known.
Feature Ideas
- While creating the Crew, you should be able to choose between different types
- open: Anyone can join
- request: People can request to join, and requests must be approved
- invite: People cannot request to join, they must be invited by someone already in the Crew
- Don’t limit a Crew to one City
- On the Crew ‘dashboard’ page, a list of Cities should be displayed where any Crew Member has completed at least one Street (in other words, combine the City list of each Crew Member into one list)
- Ability to schedule a group run (Related: Planned Runs (request a run))
- Simplest version is a setting on the Crew which notes the day(s) and time(s) of their scheduled runs e.g. every Tuesday at 7pm
- Another version is one member proposing a date/time and letting others join/accept
- A more involved approach might incorporate recent average pace to help team people up
- Some form of messaging/chat
- This could be used to organize group runs, make “divide and conquer” plans, etc
- Ability to create Routes for the entire Crew to use
- Could be useful for group runs
- Routes page may need two tabs: Mine and Crew(s), where the Crew lists Routes for any Crew you’re a member of
- Crew-based Challenges to allow individual Crews to set up time-based efforts for themselves
Ability to collaboratively complete cities
Similar to how there are User-scoped City pages (the city links from your profile), there should be Crew-scoped City pages
- Show the overall progress in that city based on the combined effort of all Crew Members
- Show everyone’s LifeMap displayed on the page at once (potentially in different colors)
- This has serious ramifications around non-Supporters, given the limitations of their LifeMap data especially on certain devices that cannot handle displaying too much data
- List of Crew members, sorted by their street count in this specific city
- List of other Crews making progress in the city
- List of incomplete streets (combined effort from all Crew Members)
- List of complete streets (combined effort from all Crew Members & potentially highlighting the Users that helped complete it)
Internal Competition
- We already have the Crew Member list on each City noted above
- The page for the Crew can include a list of its members, including street counts
- This list would be total, not City-specific
Competition between Crews
- Display Crews in a new tab on Country/Region/City pages, with their combined progress
- Automatic entry into AMSAP Challenges (as a Crew, not individual members)?
- Ability to create Challenges on the Crew level (so it’s the Crew that joins and everyone in the Crew contributes progress)?
Questions
- Should there be an upper limit of members, to keep Crews on an even playing field?
- Should people be able to join multiple Crews?
- Should owners be able to set minimum requirements to join a Crew?