Referring to this short discussion where someone asked the question for how the sorting of two or more striders with the same exact percentage in a given region worked but the answer was basically “random”. How does CityStrides rank strider finishers?
I would prefer the ranking to follow some reasonable logic. Options include, in my view, ranking “Hard Mode” striders higher and ranking striders higher who have reached that percentage value chronologically before the other striders.
Yes, I mean the order of the ranking of people who have the same exact percentage, e.g. 100%. I guess it matters to me because of geeky reasons: I prefer a clearly defined rule to plain randomness. – Might be I’m in the minority there.
I’m kind of anti-hard mode in general, so I’m sure that influences that I don’t think it should be a ranking criterion. I’d prefer to just rank folk by date of achieving 100%.
The most natural tie-breaker would be date, but as cities are constantly updated and people are dropped from their 100%, it would just become a race to get that one new street first, which would be a little meaningless
You can still rank by initial completion date. Just rank 1) by completion % and then 2) by initial completion date. I think whoever completes a city first should retain that accolade even if there’s an update and they have to go back and pick up a new street.
I agree with @6f0d21b4569c974bafaf that ranking by completion % first and date second is a nice way to reward runners and have a little friendly competition of seeing “who gets there first”. If that’s not all too important, I’d suggest sorting by user name second as it’s easier to look up among a big list of people who’ve completed the same %
While hard mode and completion date are definitely relevant criteria, there are other metrics which subjectively may be more meaningful. However, these metrics are beyond the scope of CityStrides and the focus on streets.
I’m talking about stuff like …
Private roads. Not gated communities where outsiders are clearly unwelcome or trespassing but streets that could be marked as “permissive” in OSM. There is a legality issue.
Public hiking trails. Some double track trails are included in CS, usually when they are designated as service/fire roads. Single tracks are meant for foot, bicycle or horses and often outside the scope of CS.
Bike paths (as designated in OSM). While these are primarily meant for cyclists, pedestrians are usually welcome to use them. This includes infrastructure like pedestrian/bike-only freeway overpasses.
Other footpaths. Public stairs, city-maintained footpaths, shortcuts, parks or running tracks at schools.
Unincorporated areas which use a city name for USPS. Where I live, there are areas within or on the fringes of the cities that do not fall within the official city limits. These areas still use city services, zip codes and the city name for US Postal Service.
Most or all of this stuff is beyond the intent of CityStrides. Personally, I would feel like anybody who conquered most or all of these things within a city would be a level above me if I had “only” done the streets or nodes.
– Might be I’m in the minority there.