Thanks, Harmen. No need to jump on Keith, y'all. He's a good friend of mine as well as a respected "mentor" who is merely trying to mould me into the artist he really thinks I can be one day. And he's typically right when he says something about me - so how can something as pure and good as truth "hurt", eh? He never means anything badly and he does a good job of keeping my head out of the clouds, too. :?) Anyhow, a couple of thoughts(quick ones, I hope - motormouth! lol). I gather the "crux of this biscuit" is stuff like the H20 and how some images that the responders of this thread think deserving(not neccessarily their own) don't get the attention they - rightly or wrongly - "deserve". 1) There is an image in the all-time top 5 fractals ever uploaded here that has 87 comments/rankings by non-fractalists. Only 14 fractal artists made a comment. Not saying its a bad pic - just that the fractallists here didn't support it much. 2) This ratio is many times repeated in the H20. But where images were getting 30-40 votes a while back, now one can top that list with like 17-20 - not too hard. I will assume many of the respondents on this thread don't rank images (if it's good enough to click, it must be pretty "excellent", no?) and also don't vote maybe because they think the system sucks. I didn't say ALL, btw. Well, by opting out of things it just exacerbates and further enables what you guys are on about and makes it very easy for people who y'all think "swap comments" to rise to the top. Most times they are pretty nifty fractals, anyhow. But just sitting here in the forum and carping won't do a thing to "fix" whatever "problem" y'all perceive. I think that everyone who responded here should do as - at the risk of sounding like a suck-up - Nick suggested a while back: VOTE and vote OFTEN, rather than opting out in disgust. There are something like 19 different artists on this thread. Though all don't seem to have a problem, if y'all went out and voted on the images you thought were "really good", you could probably get some of them onto the list, assuming your tastes are similar(and NO collusion), and a bloc of 10-15 votes might even push a "deserving" pic all the way to the top. You can't change human social nature so, "if you can't beat em', join 'em" and be a positive force for images that you think are exceptional. Ok, it got long anyhow - typical! lol Just trying to help in a positive way... Rick