OK, I seem to recall someone saying a WISH response isn't late until the next one is up, so I'd better get this out before the NEXT next one goes up...
Sometimes the plot of a game requires a GM to keep secrets... Where and how do you draw the line as a GM and/or player between what secrets should be kept and which ones are OK to reveal?
I'm sorry, you're not cleared for that.
Okay, I'm tempted to just leave the whole thing at that, but...
The obvious absolute answer, as I'm sure at least a dozen people have already pointed out, is that it depends even more on the game than the players. In a competitive game (like a Throne War, for instance), it's obviously more important to keep players' secrets. In something structured like Ars Magica, where people even alternate GMing, or in a more cooperative worldbuilding exercise like most Letters games, sharing secrets is critical to the continuity of the game.
Personally, I like secrets. A lot. I like having secrets, and I like finding out other people's. I don't like just being told...that takes all the fun out of it. Unless it's by someone who trusts me when they probably shouldn't, but that counts as `finding out'. Several of my characters lie in their diaries. Heck, some of them do it on their character sheets. Frankly, I resent having to tell the GM everything.
In the `public access' games I've been in, I've pretty much always worked with the GM to put some degree of misdirection into the things that go public...or even without the GM, gearing quiz answers and whatnot to be... not lies, to be sure, but misleading. I will admit freely - one of my favorite things in those kinds of games is the added challenge of keeping a secret when everyone sees everything you do...but it's still not my preferred style of game.
I speak mostly as a player. My big attempt at running a PBeM was Paths of Blood/Ways of Stone, a variant-Amber game that was *very* big on secrets. I tried running it as a complete double-blind...even if two people were in the same room, they sent their moves to me alone, and I wrote back what each one saw. This turned out to be the tiniest bit overambitious for someone who still had to work for a living, but I still love the idea.
I can barely fathom sending out little `behind the scenes' vignettes...if I ever did, I can assure you they'd be misleading at best. From a player's standpoint, I don't like them. I'm good at keeping knowledge separate, whether it's something I know or just what different characters in the same game know. But I ALSO know that players figure things out. Sometimes they guess, sometimes they intuit, and sometimes, of course, they're just kidding around and it suddenly makes sense.
But once the players *KNOW*, all that is locked off; the only avenue for the -characters- to know is to have the GM spoon-feed it to them. Bluntly, I see those little tidbits as a form of railroading. If they don't give too much away and cause those kinds of problems, I can see where they have some artistic merit, but I think they should be used very carefully.