Giana - i just want to say- especially because i singled out the kmwill fan club threads- that for me the issue isn't people not conducting themselves well.  the kmwill fan club threads are marvelous examples of how positive a group can be.  that doesn't stop it from being what i'd term a clique.  if you post, neferset and BluesDragon will welcome you, and maybe kmwill too.   and maybe 2 or 3 others.  if you initiate rather than respond, one of them and maybe one of the other main people will say something.  that's it.    but they're an incredibly nice and friendly group that handles disagreements spectacularly.  mostly, my experience with people in forums has nice and polite and i've been very thankful for responses.  i trust everyone here to conduct themselves as with the refreshingly positive attitude and sweet consideration they've shown so far. 

want another example?  check out the node cult at runtimedna.  totally wonderful, helpful people.  but very few people outside of semidieu, olivier, by.Ro, bagginsbill and a few others actually post ideas at all, let alone consistently.  most, myself included, let the experts handle it. 

how many people here have started a thread?  and how many have gotten more than 5 different people to respond?  personally, i've asked pretty basic questions on different forums on different sites and had only one thread really take off in the 6 or so years i've been around the poser community.  and the one that took off experienced severe drift, and even with the first response went in a totally different direction than i found helpful.  only  three or four people said anything i could use.  

even now, there are many fewer people posting about this decision and letting it happen than i've seen comment on images. 

as for what to do with the images, frankly, i'd say it's just as helpful to have the record of before and after images in your gallery as it is for people to see the comments.  totally external to the issue of should we have a forum or not, i think a lot of the benefit of this group to the larger community and openness of this group to the larger community lies in having our behavior integrated with the rest of the community rather than segregated into another area.   the more we model good critiques and show that they don't have to be flames, the more people can see the benefits of what critiques can do, and the more we carry that behavior outside of the group, the greater our positive effect can be on the whole community.  i think it's important that people outside the group see both images, and that there's a record associated with each.

also in that vein, it might be a good habit to start trying slightly more analytical comments on other favorite artists. maybe ask them beforehand?  just a thought.