ok, a couple of things.

first off, let me say i appreciate any comments whatsoever.  i generally get relatively few (below average, i think), but the people who comment seem fairly consistent and i really appreciate them taking the time out of their day to comment. 

second, i truly and really appreciate it when people take the time to critique my work.   i know it does take time to do constructive criticism, and i think it shows a lot of care and consideration to take the time to help me be a better artistl.

i think there's a couple of issues in play here. the first is the size of the community.  it's almost impossible to get views other than by posting comments. images move off the front page within minutes.  if you don't have some hook to bring people to your image, you won't be reachable long enough to acheive any of the high profile slots.  conversely, i find it too time consuming to do much random browsing.   so the comment network is probably the best way to generate traffic. 

but how many times does one have really interesting critiques of images?  there are many times i'd like to leave a rating without a comment.  not all images are so obvious that i can easily sum up why i like them better than "beautiful" or "lovely."  and i'm a pretty analytical person.  not to mention, if i have negative things to say about a picture, i feel obligated to say what i find good about the picture as well.  and that takes a lot longer than "looks great!"

and then there's the medium.  there's so little context for online communication (no body language, no expressions, no rise and fall of the voice, etc.), i think most people are very cautious about what they say about other people's works.

and then there's the site itself.  i listened to a talk last week by JPG magazine.  they accept photographs on a theme, allow users to vote for images, then make choices for their magazine that are informed by users' feedback and votes.  when someone asked them how to prevent people gaming the system, they said, "don't show the score."   unfortunately, that's what "most commented," "most viewed" and "highest ranked" do.  i'm not saying they should be eliminated, but if you keep score, people are going to play the game.

how do we get good critiques?  well here are my two ideas: 1- individually ask for critiques in the forum when posting images.   2 - do what dphoadley does and thank people for their critiques.   2 - start a sort of informal artist workshop group here, where we subscribe to each other's galleries, share ideas in the forums, etc.

that's  just a few random thoughts....