Remove 'manually completed' feature

I would also say I’m not the expert to say that last node I skipped is private or not. In 75-80% of my cases its pretty clear that the rest of the nodes are private or the road doesnt exist or the whole road is private. There is another 20-25% where its not all that clear but it sure feels like trespassing as you run up a long road close to someones drive way or barn or something similar with signs up everywhere “beware of dog” and you miss that last node or two because it doesnt feel safe but you just don’t know if its private or should be changed. Today I went to run a loop and the whole loop was filled with cars and trailers from a mechanic. Part of it was labeled private but some wasn’t but I wasn’t going to run through weaving into what clearly was someones place of business whereas other places its easy to do that like around malls etc. So in the end its good to have this catch all. If someone is abusing it they are only cheating themselves.

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Our group came across this yesterday. The leader of Brooklyn Adam Wapinak is clearly gaming the system and running nodes instead of roads. Seems strange as what is he going to do brag that he ran all the “nodes” in Brooklyn? Anyways the point is people will try the game system any way they can and all they are doing is cheating themselves. In the end does it matter what he does? Doesn’t affect me or stop others from actually running the whole thing. #keepthisfeature

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Running things like this, my personal opinion is: no way. My lifemap, combined with all accessible streets from OSM is my version of truth and completeness.
This wednesday i missed a street in a neighborhood otherwise completely run. But that means for me next time I am somewhere around there, I will plan a detour to actually also run that one missed street and so complete my lifemap.

Pictures like above are not really citystrides in it’s core (at least not for me, but anyone should think about their own truth in this matter)

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I think thats exactly right, everyone has their own truth. Someone was giving me a hard time because I drove to finish a half mile road that I had left (it was my last road in the town otherwise I would have just added it to another run eventually) after a 9 mile running session. He likes to do all of his runs from his home or work or whatever. You do you! I’m trying to finish all the roads in about a 20 mile radius and I’m going to do it as efficiently as possible. I thought I was already done (using Strava heatmap) but CityStrides found some parking lots, driveways and dead ends for me to finish. CityStrides also doesnt really track trails & cemeteries but I dont consider an area done until I do those. To each their own. Now what that guy Adam is thinking I have no idea…maybe he wants to be the node finish leader? or he just has an an ingenious method to complete everything that is hard to see :slight_smile:

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I support the removal.

There have been some arguments to explain why certain nodes are difficult or impossible to reach. I also face this issue but I will never complete a street manually since it is not compatible with my understanding of completion.

Since I am on a journey of several years, it is clear to me that patience is key.

  • In urban areas, I often have to run streets 2 or 3 times because the GPS bugs until I reach nodes that should not be an issue. It does not make me happy, but I re-run the street as many times as necessary, even if it is far from home.
  • I sometimes run on private roads to catch some node. I live in Europe where I don’t expect to be shot down for trespassing, so my main rule is that I would never jump over a barrier. Otherwise, it depends. When I am alone and think it is not a big deal, I run private roads because “why not?”. When a street really looks private, I just go away and store the street name in an excel table to keep track of impossible nodes (by the way, I would love to be able to put some pin on the map to remind me of this).
  • for highways and streets that would be to dangerous to run (this is just 3 streets out of 10.000 so far), I have not looked at OSM yet. (I probably will at some point.) Yes, I cannot run them. So what? It is NOT a sufficient argument for the manually completed feature.

I would suggest to calculate two percentages, one percentage with manual completion, that gives a personal subjective view of city completion and one percentage without manual completion gives an community objective view of city completion that can be used for objective comparisons.

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I think you make a good point with regards to expecting people edit OSM. Maybe a “fix this street” feature that lets users add streets to be edited by the community (maproulette style) might be interesting once the update process is in place? It would need a way to lets users comment which nodes of a street are unrunnable (and why), as well as a workflow to mark them done once someone has made the required changes in OSM.

I expect the first update cycle will take care of most dangerous streets like primary highway on/off ramps that currently exist as runnable given that the query has evolved since the first imports.

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You support removal because you would trespass so everyone should? Basically you support manual removal because you have done illegal and/or unsafe things so you think everyone else should be held to your standard. Thats just silly and a bit selfish honestly. Its also not realistic. Frankly nodes don’t even tell the whole story the lifemap does, see my screenshot. I personally run all the trails and cemeteries before I consider a place mapped, to each their own. I’ve marked < 0.1% of my 2800+ roads manually complete and I don’t feel bad about it. You are not superior for having done this, you have just made unwise decisions and gotten away with them.

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Concerning the title of this topic: don’t remove the manual completion. Everybody is accountable for his/her own lifemap, progression and interpretation of how to progress/complete in citystrides.

And since there are still some hickups in representing the real life in citystrides/OSM, it should be possible to manual complete these hickups.

recently I updated OSM (it’s so easy, anybody could learn to do it in 5 minutes) for highways that had no ‘foot = no’ (this is one of the filters used to import the data to citystrides). And although the highway was in citystrides imported because of this, i still won’t go running between cars doing 100 kph and risking my life of getting picked up by the police. The same with several streets/passages/driveways/etc. that belong to people or companies and don’t want us on their property, i edited these objects with ‘access=private’ in OSM for future import, but of course I manual completed, since these objects shouldn’t be in citystrides anyway!

So in one sentence: don’t delete the manual completion functionality (except when updates in OSM are imported on weekly basis).

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You understand wrong. I don’t advise anyone to trespass. My advice is to be careful and respectful.

Many private roads are accessible for bikes, runners and walkers in my hometown. Private roads obviously don’t mean the same everywhere, and with the global coverage, we have to find a common denominator.

I support the removal of the manuel completion because I like simple rules. And numbers that mean what they are supposed to mean.

@JamesChevalier - I read in some other thread that you refuse to have the debate about the “Definition of the Word ‘City’”… well now you could rename this thread to “Competing Philosophies of the Word ‘Complete’”! :laughing:

I personally agree with @dbafounta and think the way to manage this is through OSM. However, until there are regular updates between OSM → CS, it makes sense to leave the feature in. The gamification of running offered by CS is a huge motivator, and I think seeing the 100% when you know you’ve really achieved it is important.

And even without the feature you could pretty easily fabricate a gpx or modify existing ones to go that little bit further to capture a node without actually hitting it :man_shrugging:

I’m in favour of leaving it.

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:laughing:
Yeah, the OSM folk are particular about the word “city” (I don’t fault them for it, though) … and I am not
:laughing:

I love reading everyone’s point of view. It helps me have a better understanding of people’s perspective and goals, and overall helps me to build something that people actually want.

I think it’s pretty clear that there’s still a use for manually completing a street.
This use might be negated by a frequent OSM data update (it might not; some OSM data updates are bad, either on purpose or by accident).
The people who don’t want to use it aren’t going to use it.
It’s also now possible to manage manually completed Streets in CityStrides

I’ll be leaving this in place for now. I’ll reconsider after a healthy OSM update process is in place.
What I’ll do is close this thread, to return everyone’s votes to them (there’s some limit to the number of votes you can cast across the category). When I get the OSM update process in place, at a good frequency, I’ll create a new post for the idea of removing the manually completed feature & link to this thread for reference.

Thanks everyone!! :heart:

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