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Can you define strat hoarding in speedrunning? If you find something in a game that saves time, are you obligated to tell people about it in advance of doing runs? 
 In my mind there's likely two schools of thought about this. You either:
Type 1 - Believe it's in the best community's best interest to share in advance of runs with everyone in the spirit of free information and open competition
Type 2 - Think that the discoverer has the unique ability to capitalize on a discovery they made, and perhaps even validate the findings by performing a run with it
 Type 1 seems hard to make a case against, right - it comes across as selfish to not tell people about something you found. But I was pondering about how this happened in reality in the past, especially in earlier times in speedrunning. Realistically what would happen is that someone had an idea, developed a speedrun route around it, and would perform runs with it. Then over time as information gets shared, there'd be some collective understanding of what a good route is. 
 But I think there's a possible double standard around it. Let's go through an example- say a Japanese runner were to research independently and bust out some runs live or even perform a top run offline, I think most western speedrunners would be like "oh damn, new tech dropped, you seeing this?" and spread the word, then people would chat about it and figure it out and maybe communicate with the runner to understand it better. But I think if a westerner would do this, it would optically feel different, as if they maliciously held back their tech to get an advantage. As in, we're all part of a community that freely communicates with each other, so what good reason do you have to not share up front? 
 My first question in this write up is asking how someone could define it at all. Because I think there's an argument to be made that strat hoarding isn't a real thing in the literal sense, because the instant that you put up a video of your run with some new tech or new routing, in that same instant you are revealing that same tech or routing. We (almost) never allow runs without video proof to be allowed anywhere, so you can't literally strat hoard. It's public by nature upon proof of the run being faster, either against your own PB, or the competition. 
 I think if you take a very hard line approach to strat hoarding and are Type 1, then you somewhat disincentivize discoveries on an individual level. And from a Type 2 perspective, others reaping the benefit of something you found almost feels a bit like someone copying your homework and getting a better grade. This entire problem is also something that is somewhat specific to speedrunners who both route and perform their runs, because in many cases there are people who don't really perform runs at a high level that discover a speedrun trick and share with the world, and give it almost like a gift to the runners. But if you're a runner who experiments with new routing or finds some new tech, you inherently are giving up something of an advantage against the competition by telling people in advance. Is it a problem if you don't communicate in some form in advance? 
 And also, on the topic of saying something "in advance", where's the line in all of this? Let's say you discovered some new tech. Let's say it's a SNES game and it saves something like 10 seconds in a 10 minute run where 10 seconds is very significant. If you keep it to yourself, grind out a run, then post a top time with it, people might call it strat hoarding. But what if you find something, spend 2 weeks grinding the tech in practice before doing runs, then you do your "due diligence" by posting a discovery you made, THEN you go live in a day or two and start doing runs with the advantage of being practiced on a trick that may help you convert into getting a top time quicker than your competition, is that fair? Did you abide by some community standard to communicate your findings before you did runs? 
 I think this gets especially murky with re-routes instead of new tech. There's the classic SM behemoth example. In some ways, someone could sit around and theorize many different routes for old games, especially RPGs, but nothing really matters until you put it in a run. And there's no better proof that something would be faster than if you just performed the run with that route and show that it's faster. Those of us that have been around a long time have seen so many armchair opinions of lesser familiar people being like "oh well what about this for the speedrun, wouldn't [X] be faster?" and everyone else groans and eyerolls. And out of almost a fear of not coming across with those sentiments, sometimes it feels like preemptively theorizing routes without actually performing them in a run comes across the same way. So why not just do the run and prove it first? 
 There are some extreme examples where things like obscure RNG manipulation things happen in the background that are not discernable to the viewer. Let's say someone made some RNG pattern discoveries, then puts together a run that has them. Then they perform their run, and fully acknowledge that RNG manipulation is a thing in this run and make sure it's well known. But even with a split category, leaderboards pretty much never require an explanation for how the manipulations happen, so the runner gets the unique advantage of their discoveries without being expected to tell anyone about how they did it. Which is a Type 2 approach from above. And even if they did tell people about it, it's usually so technical that only a very small subset of people could ever interpret it all. So is that strat hoarding? Is there an obligation to share the discoveries either in advance, or beyond the video proof of the run? 
 My 2 cents is that obviously withholding information in a devious manner is bad karma and just generally lame. But I also think runners should be able to reap the rewards of something they discovered without getting backlash as if they did something wrong if they were to not say something about it in advance, and should be able to perform a PB/top time as a way to prove or validate their findings. 
 And also if you have examples to share, I want to hear them 
 So I'll pose the questions again. Can you define strat hoarding? Are you obligated to communicate your findings in advance of using them?