Rumor and innuendo...I hate this. I haven't seen the offending IM's but my understanding was that Thelma was told her work was not deserving of being in the hot 20 and that she wasn't the only one to receive nasty IM's stating that. I was even more surprised to hear it was Arend as he is an excellent artist himself and always has images in the hot 20. When Thelma posted her goodbye fractal I checked the hot 20 because of her explanation and he had 2 on it then so it couldn't have been jealousy or envy. I have received IM's from Arend and others using translaters and they are terrible, you have to read between the lines! It's very possible that something came out all wrong...I really have no way of knowing. After reading Arend's post from Eveline it sounds to me that he may have IM'ed about the way the hot 20 worked (which is exactly what Dirk and Keith said) and his message got lost in the translation but I can only guess. Since this has all been made public now perhaps the IM should be also. I may have to go back to no comments for a bit...even though I really love to hear someone likes what I've made, this has to be kept in perspective. ;o) Edited to add a ^5 to Matt...;o)

Treat people as if they were what they ought to be...
And you help them to become what they are capable of being.
                                                                ~Goethe~
R.I.G.H.T.S.