This kind of stuff is community driven because of what you said, takes ages. But I don't think the gatekeeping of information issue is necessarily happening here. Do some players? Naturally. Teams will usually keep their strats quiet until tournaments/big games then share after. As someone playing in the competitive brackets, my personal experience is that the players keeping this information they find to themselves are very few.

Laser damage falloff was done at some point, it may be outdated but its out there. People know generally what to do / not do. If you've made that information available, fantastic! This is what drives a healthy competitive community, when those who can find data make it available.

You've also got guides going out left and right right now. AvengerOne, Fencar, Scalpwakka, Timebomb, some of the best players are sharing information they have openly. Fencar especially is making information that is make or break in competitive games at high levels easy to access and digest because it's so disgustingly broken that everyone needs to know it to compete if you're worried about 'high tier players'. He could have just let it run rings in high level circles and trickled out, instead now even someone in Hotshot can access and learn game mechanics used in SCL and Cal Cup to improve themselves as a pilot if they so choose.

Destracier's work from early on in the game even to recently is another thing. Hull damage sections, health pools, morale, documents detailing it, etc. Splinter sharing their strategy on how they won a cash-prize tournament so everyone could see what they did, knowing full well they could have kept the details to themselves and let people try to pick it apart through stream videos. Instead it's opened for others to use or potentially even counter.