On 26th September 2024, Strava announced “Segment Updates: Verified Segments, Decluttering and Leaderboard FAQ’s“. The goals are to remove duplicated as well as messy (bad GPS data) segments, tidy up the leaderboards (removing dodgy times) and to introduce “verified” segments. The result should be tidier segment lists for your Strava activities. Some of you will remember that in Jan 2021 almost all Zwift Virtual Ride segments were deleted (apart from Zwift-Insider’s segments used in the ZI leaderboard in VeloViewer ) which was a welcome relief to my API rate limits, given how many segments there used to be!
There are a few knock-on effects in VeloViewer which I will go over here, but do check back as the situation is still quite dynamic and issues might resolve or new ones become uncovered! The decluttering is ongoing with more segments being decluttered each time I check. Strava’s announcement says it’ll be decluttering for “a few weeks”.
Note that a “decluttered” segment is basically the same as “deleted”, although if loading the segment details on the Strava website it redirects automatically to the remaining segment. If you had a goal or star on a decluttered segment then those will be moved automatically to the remaining segment, so most of the time you won’t even notice that anything has changed. It does appear at first, that the decluttered segment has just been renamed, but actually it is doing a redirect to the remaining segment (the id changes in the URL).
QOM/KOM/Top 10 counts – impact on VeloViewer Score
Lets say you have the best time up a particular climb and that climb had 5 very similar segments, then previously you would probably have had 5 QOM/KOMs for that climb. Potentially 4 of those segments will be decluttered as part of this process, so now you’ll be left with just the 1 QOM/KOM for that climb. This of course applies to all placings, not just QOM/KOMs.
The biggest impact will be to your VeloViewer Score which will inevitably drop as a result. This will happen after your activities are “Checked for new segments” which is when those decluttered segment times/placings will be removed in your VeloViewer data. In November (when the decluttering has finished) it will be worth using the “Check for new segments” button on your Update page and work through your activities to make sure all of the decluttered segments are removed. Better to take the hit to your VeloViewer Score in one go rather than spreading it out, but wait until the decluttering process is finished at the end of October!
Before those decluttered segments are removed you might see some incorrect times/placings on segments that have been decluttered – but not yet removed – from your VeloViewer data (i.e. when you haven’t yet been through all your activities, checking for new segments). This is because the Strava API that gets your placing for a decluttered segment actually redirects and returns the values for the remaining segment which might have different results. There currently isn’t a way to know this is happening from the API response, but it will all sort itself once the decluttering has finished and your activity segments are updated in November.
100 Climbs Leaderboards
This is a much tricker one and we currently don’t know what the best solution is going to be. Simon Warren’s 100 Climbs leaderboards (linked from the “Leaderboard” menu above) are based on lists of specific segments, the majority of which Simon has created himself, with start/finish locations carefully selected to match the climb description in his books which match up to the most realistic starts and ends of the climbs themselves. He has also named them after the most widely recognised names for the climbs. A sizeable (and currently growing) number of Simon’s segments have been decluttered.
The API endpoint that is used to get your times for each segment (“segment efforts”) is returning an empty array for decluttered segments, which is also the expected response if you haven’t completed the segment. If you check your times, you will now not show a time/tick for segments which have been decluttered, even if you have completed the climb. This will be the same in Simon’s phone apps (which aren’t related to VeloViewer but share the same lists of segments).
One solution could be to simply to swap the segment ids for any decluttered segment over to the id for the linked, remaining segment. The issues with this approach include that start/end locations and climb name might no longer match the book descriptions. In some instances that could lead to someone no longer ticking a climb that was previously ticked, and also possibly changes in the leaderboard ordering as times change one way or another, relative to others.
Because the decluttering is an ongoing process, if I were to update segment ids now, then tomorrow a few more may well have been decluttered. We are currently debating when updates are done, as well as what those updates might be.
Note that this isn’t affecting the Zwift-Insider leaderboards, Virtual Ride segments as much, probably because they were extensively decluttered back in 2021.
Bear with us – it’s work in progress! Check back here for any updates soon.