The Hot20 is a product of it's environment. Since the most popular genre is the pinup/vicky fantasy image, of course, they are going to garnish the most views/votes. It's the nature of the audience.

Geoegress:
With all due respect, I remember when it was the most viewed that got the hot20 spots. It was much worse than what is there now. People would make up phony thumbnails just to get into the most views. A catchy title or a alluring thumb can do wonders for such statistics. What is most viewed has nothing to do with quality (and I AM NOT saying that viewed images aren't quality works, but the two aren't necessary the same thing).

I like the idea of member picks and was glad to see them add the Favorite Artist and Images. Doing so on a weekly basis will be cool to present a diverse culture of artists, since we all have different tastes and views. Even though deemarie and Lyrra did a great job in flagging some excellent images, I think having more people do it will really balance it out.

I still think that a random showcase gallery where each artist can put in one image into it that best shows their work (that they could change when they wanted). Then when people enter, they get a random 100 or more images from that gallery. They can hit a button to get another 100. This would give every artist a fair shot to show his/her stuff and not based on the understandable bias of human nature.

ShadowWind