There will always be trolls, cheaters or sandbaggers.
Nobody will ever change that.
Flagging or reporting is not an option.
Zwift needs to change the system.
I think that’s exactly why Aoi’s suggestion would work. I doubt there are very many people who decide to pay for a sub because they A) tried it for free and B) weren’t going to pay until they tried racing specifically. Particularly when locking away racing would still leave racey group rides available. Those few people who A and B both apply to would be able to see most of what racing is like there. Sure, the ‘look at me I’m cool!’ clowns would still be able to try to scratch out some self-esteem by cheating in the group rides. But it would be a good step to take for racing.
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if they do, there is no automation in place at all so it comes down to human judgement and manual administration anyway. WTRL, and i have seen it in action so i do know it actually exists and works, have a working automatic process in place to deal with micro bursting, but zwift don’t have anything like that for anything, other than maybe profanity, not sure if that’s still in place. and like i probably feel some kind of way about that, for sure, but it’s precisely because there is no automation in place that i can understand and even appreciate that they are slow to act
i like to think i understand a little about human behaviour, i’m often wrong though. but what happens here is that group rides will appear that are essentially just free, moderated races. maybe advertised as a “race like experience” or “intro to zwift racing” etc. community leaders will take it on themselves to run them just like any other zwift race. then, no need to pay, really. i don’t think it’s a small decision to just lock racing or group rides at all beyond the trial period. it was one of the first things i did on zwift when i registered, 4 or maybe 5 years ago and what kept me paying for it instead of trainerroad
edit: i can’t remember the actual number but i do remember the sentiment: zwift staff have told us before that the amount of people who engage in community racing and events is a very small percentage of the user base. like shockingly miniscule. i really think most of the user base is missing out as it is and i think community racing needs more barriers to entry, real or intangible, like the average zwift user needs more sock options
I won’t argue with you on that–my instinct would be that the big Group Rides (Tour of Whatevers) would be something Zwift might want to let people exploring the platform take part in. But if the numbers bear it out, locking those off might be okay too. I’m agnostic on that point 
I completely agree that those rides get very racey. But there are, I’m sure you know, plenty of people here who like to separate them in kind and say “Group Rides aren’t Races” as a mantra, lol (not mocking anyone, just saying). Me, I could see it either way for this suggested policy.
it would probably confuse things but maybe there can be different levels of races some of which are level locked.
Or ideally give organiser the power to control their race. We don’t need zwift to police things as much if they allowed oragnisers to manage things. live kicks etc of anyone causing issues.
and of course they need better tools to stop the really stupid stuff that is going on.
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to be honest gordon i made it sound like i was just assuming others would do that anyway but if they paywall any sort of social activity (don’t see it happening really, but if) then the first thing i am doing is going straight to you and every other organiser and spinning the proposed format into some kind of recruitment opportunity or something. i just do not like the idea at all
very much agree with the ideal solution instead. actually it’s the only solution
I agree with you.
Just on the Sugar Cookie route I did yesterday, every single sprint had the same “DOT” rider (where name is shown as a full stop) winning every leaderboard at half the time of everyone else even though the second and third place were very fast.
It’s ridiculous.
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Organizers already have the power to control their own race? They can remove any riders post race.
While having live kick works, there are yellow beacons riders that starts throwing everyone out on a group ride.
Go with a voting system. Riders collectively can vote to throw a rider out. You get 10 bad apple votes, you get tossed. And good apple votes off set the bad ones.
There are likely better methods. Unlocking CE is one method, you can’t race until you unlock CE.
Increase the barrier that it takes to unlock racing.
Maybe, make it a requirement to do 50km first. That should at least take an hour. Do a group ride. Hit level 6. Adding in a tutorial, how to use Zwift.
Post race is no good needs to happen live.
If a rider leader starts kicking riders unnecessary there are ways to deal with that and I’m sure would get flagged up soon enough if somebody was abusing it. No rider leader or organiser would want to lose their role so I doubt there would actually be many complaints.
I also think a small level unlock might be good for racing and would impact very few riders.
As in the level system already?
That would be worked around by level up bots, which is how some people go about getting the tron bike as well, so they don’t have to ride hills.
I agree that removing the cheaters post race is no good, they have already impacted the race.
You’d need some appointed commissaire to watch the data of all riders and kick out the naughty people.
Zwift do nothing about bots right now so that also needs some work.
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A simple check of power variability would catch most bots. If your power output doesn’t change for 30 seconds you get kicked out.
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How many races have a live organizer? Most races are under 10 people per pen. If the race have an organizer are they actively racing or are they monitoring? If they are racing, it’s hard to pay attention to what is happening while pushing hard.
That does sound like a great solution, until bots have variability like Pacer bots.
I wonder if some people would be able to record and re-do their own power as a bot, with modifications.
That would be nearly impossible to detect.
Probably best we stop discussion here just giving more ammo to people with bad intentions.
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Forget racing. What really makes me angry is when I see people cheating during individual workouts. Man, that makes me so upset, just seeing them ride by like that. If I were one of these cheaters, looking to prove how cool I was and upset people, I’d do that instead of entering races. Oooooh, that makes me soooo mad!
