Curation & Voting¶

Built, switched on after launch

The map's three view modes and the route path (propose, curator review, I rode this verification) are live. The season ballot described below is built and stays switched off until after launch: until then /vote shows the lists without vote buttons and /best shows a simulated result.

Curation over completeness is one of the things that set the Cycling Commons apart. It is an important part of the Commons, not the whole of its intention: what the Commons is for, and the principles under it, are in the Manifesto. The Commons doesn't try to list every climb that exists. It surfaces the ones worth your weekend, as judged by the riders who know the area. For things that are a matter of taste, the best-of is the point; an exhaustive dump helps no one plan a ride.

Two kinds of data, two strategies¶

The single organising principle of the Commons:

	Subjective / experiential	Objective / utility
Examples	best climbs, bike-friendly stays, finest views, history & culture, top quality rides	road surface, water points, toilets, repair stations, hazards, bike shops
Goal	curated: the best, ranked	complete: as exhaustive as possible
How	riders rank a top 5 per list for next season; routes also count I rode this	one-tap reports; confirm & decay
The value is	the ranking	the coverage

Voting makes no sense for a water tap: it's either there or it isn't, and you want them all. Ranking is the whole point for a climb: you want the best ten, not all two hundred.

Regions¶

Curation happens per region. A region is ordinary public geography: a country, or one of its first-level subdivisions such as a province or a state. It is never a shape invented by an app built on top of the Commons. An app may line its own shapes up with Commons regions. The Commons never bends its regions to fit an app. That is what keeps the Commons useful to everyone, and tied to no single product.

For each region the Commons surfaces a best-of. It is one of the map's three view modes:

Best of: the curated list, what this page is about.
Confirmed: everything in Best of, plus every place a rider or curator has checked.
Everything: every place the Commons holds. This is the default view.

The best-of covers:

the best climbs
the best bike-friendly stays
the most scenic views
the best history & culture to ride past
the best quality rides / routes (on the same season ballot; a route list can be narrowed to one bike)
(extensible: best café stops, best gravel, etc.)

So when you arrive somewhere new, you get a clear, opinionated picture of the best there is, instead of drowning in data.

The voting rounds¶

One list per region, season and kind. Climbs, routes, scenic views, history & culture and where to sleep each get their own list in every region, for every riding season. Spring 2027 is one round, spring 2028 the next. South of the equator the seasons are the other way round.
You vote for next season. The ballot open in autumn fills the winter list. Voting closes when winter starts, and the winter list is published that day and shown all winter. While a ballot is open no page shows any count, so nobody can read the standings and bet on them.
A ranked top 5 per list. Each rider picks up to five places in a list, at most one vote per place, and puts them in order: the number one gets 15 points, then 10, 7, 4 and 2. Picks and their order can change until the rider submits the ballot. A route vote also says which bike it was ridden on, so "best on a handbike" is a list of its own.
Submit makes it count. The rider submits the ballot with one pick or more. A rider who knows one place picks that one, and it gets the number one's 15 points. Only a submitted ballot counts, and it is final for that season. Picks never submitted count for nothing and are deleted when voting closes.
Who votes. A confirmed email address, an account at least 14 days old, and one thing done on the map: a confirmed place, a ridden route, or a contribution sent in (one that was turned down does not count). With few voters, one fake account would otherwise decide a list.
A ranking needs 5 voters. Below that the list says "No ranking yet" and shows the places riders confirmed most.
Last year's top 5 count a little less. In the same season a year later their points count x0.75, so the list changes over the years while a clearly loved place can still win.
Close calls share a place. Less than one point apart is too close to call; the place that won less often before is listed first.
Every season starts empty. Votes count for one season of one year only. When voting for a season closes its result is stored, and it does not change afterwards.
No numbers in public. The lists show places and how close each is to first, never how many votes or voters they had.

Solving the cold start¶

Empty lists before a voting culture exists would kill the feature.

A list with fewer than five voters does not pretend to have a winner. It shows the places riders confirmed most (newest first where nothing is confirmed yet), so a region can show a climbs ranking while its places to sleep still say "No ranking yet". Nothing in a ranking is derived from usage, and there are no curators' picks to fall back on. Seeding a list from anonymous aggregate popularity, through the sensing boundary, is a later idea: that sensing layer is not built, and the heatmap the demo map shows is sample data, not measured activity.

The backlog: nothing is thrown away¶

The best-of is the lede, not the whole library. Every climb, view, and route beyond the top list still lives in the Commons as a backlog, fully queryable for completists who want it all. The Commons ranks data; it never discards it.

Integrity¶

Five votes per rider per list, at most one per place; the database itself refuses a sixth that arrives at the same moment.
X adapts to the region. A flat province may have three climbs worth listing; the Alps have hundreds. The curated target scales with the density of genuinely good options.
Provenance without identity (Manifesto §VIII): the Commons stores that a vote was cast and when, never a public record of who voted for what.
You can always see your own. Your profile lists the season votes you've cast (with the round and, for a route, the bike) and the places you've confirmed, a private view for your eyes only, so "did I already back this?" never requires guessing. When you delete your account your votes go with it; a season that has already ended keeps its totals, which do not say who voted.