Regarding the competition angle, speedrunning is different from "normal" forms of racing in that the competitors aren't racing at the same time but rather comparing their absolute best runs from whenever those runs might have occurred. What this means is that you can't actually gain an advantage by using a skip before other people get a chance to, whether you allow them to have the same knowledge as you before or after you put up your best effort with the skip it will still be your best effort and whether their best effort happens earlier or later will still be their best effort... so in the end it's the exact same. You might get to hold onto the WR for a few extra weeks but that's an illusory accomplishment, if they eventually beat you then it's functionally identical to them having already beaten you.

In short, add to the information pool of games whenever possible because it's good for the community and doesn't actually hurt you in any way. At the end of the day you're still going to need to put in the work to execute it better than the others once they also learn the new route. The one possible exception of this could be race events but holding off on using a skip long enough to debut it in a race seems like an uncommon enough thing to not be worth thinking about, if you discover something right before a race then sure keep it secret and let the surprise factor add to the hype but otherwise just spread the word.

I found a glitch in BoF2 and we had a relay race coming up on the RPGLB channel

1. I developed it a bit upon finding it before sharing
2. It would have been unfair to use the glitch over others not using it.
3. even if I got a good time once I did a run and people saw it they would've used it no matter what.
4. Sharing it (after teasing it a bit and improving it a bit) after teasing for a bit... it turned out great! Runners used and developed strats that I didn't think of.
5. After our big event relay I found a new improved version and after teasing it again and improving it a bit more I shared the results and it lead to great overall innovation. Again, I could've held onto it for months and came out of no where but it would've been copied and other runners helped carry the benefits beyond what I had originally thought. I think by trying to build on it a bit of where you think it should go... there is nothing wrong with that.

You don't have to, but I think something game communities (in particular the fighting game community!) has learned in the past couple decades is that keeping stuff like this back doesn't promote healthy competition at all.

If you find something, keeping it under your belt for a surprise new WR,can be a nice surprising thing to do. But it's gonna have to come out eventually anyway if you want to use it in a run. So you may as well explain it and share it with the community asap. You never know, somebody else might find something and return the favor, helping to improve your own run.

Third Strike is a notorious example of this. Players used to keep tech to themselves, never share, always gatekeep, etc. And as a result, not a single US player could stand up to the Japanese -and- everybody hated Third Strike because the general consensus was that everybody who played it was a bit of a prick.

Much different now, thankfully, especially in the UK. People share knowledge all the time and help each other to improve. But in the old days, you'd often encounter something in a match you might never have seen before, and on-top of that if you asked the opponent to explain it so you could defend against it in future, they'd just tell you to "get good".

You are under no obligation to share anything, it's a video game, lol? A lot of posts seemingly like to point to how it hurts the community, or yourself by holding back information on a skip, route change, etc. I disagree, because a lot of posts make an assumption that is predicated on the idea that someone better than you is going to beat you anyways. This is a false notion, while in some games this may be true, what if the skip or discovery shifts the paradigm of the game that may take away the advantage of the current wr holder? In other words, the current wr holder is really optimal at the current route, but the new route changes takes out some portion of the run that person optimized. Now they struggle to do the new skip well, you do it better, you get optimal at the run, post the time and take wr, and then they struggle for awhile to wr over you. Or you could already be a runner and find something, then this allows you to wr for free, but you still push for a better time with it and make it harder, at least for awhile.

So the assumption that you are at a disadvantage finding a new skip and then getting wr with it, is seemingly incorrect to assume in all cases. Yes, being optimal and doing it better is going to be the best option to maintain wr in the long run, but you also assume the top runner is better than the person who finds the skip, which may or may not be the case at all times. If I was running a game, close to the top time, or shifting wr between myself and another runner, then I find something that gives me free time save, and free wr, of course I would optimize and then post wr with it. It may then take the other runner quite some time to grind, or push for wr again.

Or they get turned off by it, bored, and the trick is annoying to execute, and it pushes them out of the run that used to be fun and competitive for them. This also happens, sometimes people get turned off, and they quit. People make a lot of assumptions that you're at a disadvantage, I think that's simply not always true.

I would say if you find something and don't share it, more power to you. Way too many people make this sweeping assumption you need to share to help advance the game, almost as if it's expected of you. Like people are entitled to your finds, lol no. If I want to share, I will, if I don't, that's up to me, not you. Community is good, I agree, but it's also a competition, and if I have an advantage, why wouldn't I take advantage of that advantage? Giving over a strat or a find is like telling an NFL team to give over their playbook to the opposing team every game, so they can prepare for the play calls, lol?

That being said, not everything people don't share is done with any intent, I've ran games and found things during runs or practice and didn't think to say anything about it, didn't seem important, was a small thing in my head, or whatever. Sometimes you just gotta figure stuff out on your own and have your own style as well. People expect handouts, handouts won't make you good, just do runs and practice.

It all depends on what you want to do.

Do you "want to be the very best like no one ever was", with a complete disregard for the game's community? If so, keeping your discovery to yourself won't earn you any points with other runners. But then again, if community is not a priority to you, then by all means. But keep in mind that someone, someday, will figure out how you pulled that WR off, and will release the info. Then he'll get the credit for "discovering it" instead of you. And then the WR will get optimized by someone else with that new info.

The way I see it, even if you'd withhold the info for selfish reasons, you'd ultimately end up with the biggest loss when it's all set and done. You'll benefit from withholding the info on a short term basis, but will end up with the short end of the stick in the long run, and with no bragging rights.

In general, it is safe to say that there is always going to be someone better than us at any game we play. We may hold the WR in an obscure category of an obscure game, but don't let that fool you into thinking that you're the best in the world at it.

Competition in this community is generally against ourselves rather than against others, and that it what makes it a lot more pleasant and less toxic than communities that are driven by players competing against each other. Most of the games I run are single-player, so there's not really a way for us to compete against each other (though we do sometimes via SRL), so we are competing against our best times rather than competing to beat another person.

From my perspective, this question is irrelevant, because the person you are competing against is yourself. If we are doing the best that we can, whether or not the rest of the community uses our strat or not doesn't really matter.