I do see your point, and I am very greatful when someone helps me. But I think it misses the point: If the telent you need the most for modeling is to get contacts to the right men, it has nothing to do with "being serious" about the hobby or actual modeling skills. And that's what I meant with the computer analogy: To achieve anything above the basic hunting and gathering from some thousand years ago, you always need collaborative effort. Noone, how brilliant he may be, will build a PC, or ID all kit parts all on his own, because he would have no money to buy the kits, no information when the original was built, which kits could be in, he wouldn't even know that the original exists if noone would share information about it.
So my point is: Why should the chain of information be cut at the kit ID level? For me, this is done if the information is not shared openly (again, which does not mean without reward). There's the example with the Kerr plans of the TOS Enterprise. It seems to be limited to a very small circle, but what is the point of having the most accurate plans ever made, if they are not used? People would buy them for good money, and I think that's fair. But why hiding information? In the TOS BigE case, there may be reasons I am not aware of, but for the usual kit IDs, I can't see such a reason.
The next point is that it devides people. If you get information from A, and are befriended with B, but A states you can't share it with B, what's the whole point of it? Risking friendship for kit IDs? There seem to be some examples of this mechanism here on this board, and I doubt that it's worth it... at least for me.
This all does not mean that I don't understand your point, but perhaps, I just don't like secrecy...
Cheers,
Thorsten
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But you can have double dealings only if you have two groups, one which is yours, and another. Then you risk one of "your" group "selling" to the other. But if you share knowledge with everyone, noone needs to deal with it.