LornaW,
Art is a very personal matter and why people do it varies as much as the images themselves. I create images because my life is a very painful one, and I find it to be great therapy to entertain the viewers of my work. I've had images in the Hot20 and I appreciate the fact that people enjoyed my work enough to put me there. I have no illusions that I am a fantastic technical artist, just as I have no illusion that I'll ever be Brad Pitt. That's the great thing about Rosity, versus other sites. You don't have to be a Hobbit level artist to participate here. Whether one is looking to have a career in 3D or just does it to escape real life, there is a place for them on Rosity. And it's refreshing, because many artists really put their hearts into an image, rather than just churning out what the industry says is worthy. I think people respond to that. As you pointed out, there are plenty of sites to get harsh critiques (though raph.com is a poor example judging from what I've seen there). That should be up to the artist and whether it fits why they do it, not forced upon them as some kind of "punishment" for doing an image that people like for whatever reason. I can tell you that outside of the 2D/3D artist's circle, people judge as they do here. Whether they relate to the end product, not how the artist got there.

Another 2 cents,
ShadowWind

PS: I personally like the hot20, especially in Vue as I see a lot of excellent images I missed, and I didn't mean above to endorse it's demise. My point was that if you do get rid of it for some reason, it would be great to modify the Top 100 to take up the slack.