Spot Burning - wonder how Rex feels about this?

LET ME PREFACE THIS BY I'M POSTING THIS BECAUSE A BUNCH OF US HAVE BEEN DISCUSSING THIS ISSUE THIS WEEK OFFLINE AND I'D LIKE TO SEE OTHER TAKES ON IT

not sure how many of you guys still go to the other board, but obviously if you do it's become a lot more fun lately with the ridiculously long infamous spot burn post...so it begs a big question, and it's actually fishing related and it comes in many parts, and relates to how people are going to post on this board...let me first preface this by the fact, I am all about sharing information, always have been. In the past, up until this year, I would share my exact fishing spots with anyone who asked for help, thinking I was doing a good thing....the more I learned about the bay, the more I learned this probably wasn't the way to do it. I still share as much information as I can, but I share it in a responsible manner...

obviously the spot that was burned on the other board was not a huge secret...nor are most spots on the bay, but in my opinion you should actually have to put the work in checking it out and see if there are fish there, or find out from one of your buddies who found 'em...why post an exact spot on a board, especially in the dead of winter when fish are more scarce?

to paraphrase my personal hero and idol on an interweb message board, you aren't Columbus discovering America, someone else has been at your spot before you, they kept it quiet, or told their friends in hopes that the spot would not get overrun with lurkers or lazy ass people who don't want to look for their own fish, so why do you feel the need to brag about it on a message board

so it begs the questions, how do You personally decide who to trust? I fish with a lot of guys, 80% with one or two guys in particular, and the other 20% with about 20 or so other guys. I also have a lot of fishing conversations about spots and where the bite is, fishing patterns,etc with people, some of whom I've never met in person. A few of these people I talk to regularly and I trust more with information than almost anyone else. There are also people I see on the water who I'll give my most direct information and they do the same to me. They know I will tell noone, and I know they will tell noone.

Then there are people I fish with, who I would not take to a specific hot spot because, they wouldn't post it on one of the websites, but they would tell others, who would then tell others and burn the spot that way. Then there are the guys I fish with I'll take to general areas everyone knows because, not only will they burn a spot to others, probably post it on the world wide internets, but they won't reciprocate information. All these people in all the categories are friends of mine, they just fall into specific trust levels...I don't like them any less, but I guess I expect people to have the same level of secrecy with my spots as I would have with theirs.

I don't know, I just know there were a lot of people angered by that post on the other board, a few guys and I have been talking about this lately and since I don't give a **** what anyone thinks, I said I would post it and see the general feeling of others....this board being smaller, less lurkers, and a tighter knit group of guys who all for the most part know each other...so we can sit around the sharing circle, and be in the trust tree, and sing kum by ah and see how we all feel!!!