Last week we announced Zwift’s plans to remove rider height and weight from ZwiftPower, among other changes (read the full post here).
Response to our post as well as Zwift’s own post in their forum were resoundingly negative from members of the Zwift racing community. While most Zwifters seemed to understand and even appreciate the intent behind the change, there was concern that removing this information would result in increased height/weight doping.
This afternoon, Zwift posted a follow-up message on the forum. Here it is in its entirety:
Last week we outlined a number of planned changes to address harassment and further safeguard the health and wellbeing of the Zwift Community.
Among the communicated changes were plans to hide the visibility of height and weight from ZwiftPower in an effort to encourage individual health and wellness. This raised concerns within the Zwift Racing Community regarding fairness in racing. Though our intent is to protect potentially vulnerable users by removing labels that can trigger unhealthy behaviours, we also hear the concerns of the racing community.
As such, we have agreed to pause this change while we develop tools that deliver greater transparency to Zwift racing while promoting wellness. For the time being, height and weight will remain visible on ZwiftPower.
We would like to thank the community for your passion and feedback. Your voice is important to us. In the future, we’ll continue to bring potential product ideas and changes to members of the Zwift Racing Community, with the hope that you’ll embrace this as a collaborative effort to help shape the experience.
Other planned changes communicated last week, including plans to improve the reporting features in Zwift will be rolled out as planned. Additionally, we’ll be moving forward on hiding height and weight from Zwift Companion and Web. We remain committed to protecting the health and well being of the broader Zwift Community, and we look forward to enacting additional measures in the future.
Our Comments
We like this move from Zwift. First, it shows that they’re listening to the community. That’s a good thing. We really like the sound of this:
In the future, we’ll continue to bring potential product ideas and changes to members of the Zwift Racing Community, with the hope that you’ll embrace this as a collaborative effort to help shape the experience.
Secondly, Zwift’s statement says they agree there is a need for “tools that deliver greater transparency to Zwift racing.” That’s good to see, and we completely agree! As we said in the first post, “Assuming race organizers can access the data via ZwiftPower, and the site includes simple tools for spotting potential weight or height dopers (perhaps flagging those who made dramatic changes recently), then hiding weight and height data from the public should work swimmingly.”
Hopefully when it comes time to hide height and weight from public view on ZwiftPower, Zwift will have some really useful tools in place which help race organizers do their jobs more quickly and effectively, while promoting wellness in the racing community.
As Zwift racer James Eastwood so aptly put it, “The community don’t want to see people’s weight – they want fair racing.”
Your Thoughts
Share your thoughts below, and you may also wish to share those thoughts on the actual forum post.
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