I like what karen1573 and tainted_heart said in their posts. A few years ago, people weren't scared of offering constructive criticism. But after all the scars many of them have amassed, who can blame them for no longer offering advice?

Anyone who has had formal art training understands and usually appreciates critiques. I wish we had a forum specifically for artists who are looking for critiques. I would skip the gallery entirely if we had something like that, and just post my stuff where I can get tips. I'm interested in learning and improving more than anything else.

Other than that, I usually post a message with my pics that says "Critiques welcome" or something to that effect. I also decided to disable the ratings option for my images. I think this has improved my ability to get good useful help. Plus, it seems that almost everyone gets their images rated "excellent" anyway, whether its good or bad. It's like when my teacher decided to give everyone in the class an "A", even though some of us had spent hours on our projects and some of us had done almost no work the entire quarter. Its not really helpful or motivating to give people the answers they want. As artists, if we can, we should try to motivate people to do their best work.