It seems as though there have been quite a few occasions of users being wary or reluctant to participate in the open sharing of resources. This is not necessarily a new phenomenon, and I fully understand the reasoning behind the line of thought; by publishing resources online, you are helping the competition which you must defeat in order to succeed! I can understand this reluctance, and generally in the past people of this persuasion would generally abstain from sharing full files, and just ask/answer questions on forum threads.
Perhaps it's just me, then, but I've noticed a slight change in the rhetoric regarding this philosophy, observed through posts and discussions in both the forums and IRC (so it's not just one person or an isolated incident; I am not trying to call any specific people out). There's been a rise in the idea of private trading and exchanges, almost like a science marketplace. Resources have value, and thus they should be traded for other resources of equal value, otherwise one person in the exchange might be taken advantage of. From a competition standpoint, I understand how this thought arises. Competition is stiff, and resources are important for preparation.
However, this idea kind of loses sight of a large subset of this competition. The Science Olympiad Vision is as follows: "Our vision is to increase K-12 student and teacher participation in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM)." The way I think about it, while private exchanges benefit the participants of the exchange, it shuts out those who may not have anything to exchange in the first place. I'm talking mainly about lower-level, new, and growing teams, which is what drives the overall participation in this activity. Higher level teams get the accolades, and deservedly so, but the majority of Science Olympiad teams are not at that level, and are more about letting students explore interesting scientific fields than trying to compete for high places, especially in the more competitive states. In a private trading system, I fear that these teams would get lost in the shuffle.
Now, I think the mission of teams of all levels is valid, and I don't really have a good solution for how to help meet the goals of these varying missions simultaneously. And while I do stay somewhat involved with competitions nowadays, it's possible that there's something I'm missing in this dynamic that does benefit lower-level teams directly that renders this whole discussion rather unnecessary. So I really want to hear from you guys who are still competing about what are your thoughts about these things; should certain resources be protected more, what place should private exchanges have, how do we manage the goals of all teams (and are some goals more important than others, perhaps), etc.
I know this is a lot of text, but I had a lot of thoughts about this and I didn't necessarily want to dominate this thread with constant posts, so here's just one with most of what I've been sitting on. So feel free to discuss amongst yourselves, and I (and maybe you) will hopefully learn something!
