"i'm asking whether people turn off the moment they recognize vicky or miki or other "poser" content, or flip to ultra critical. 

so it's better to have a picture in maya or cinema4d or max or lightwave, with poor posing and poor expression and hackneyed composition? with yet another female made from scratch that has 1/10 the quality of the available figures?   or to do badly proportioned, stiff, ludicrously posed cg drawings and paintings? "

To the first part of this ?.....Yes.  The folks I know in the industry do not want any recognizable Poser figures.  Period.  Why?  When they pitch their products it would be a kiss of death to have someone pop up and say...."Why isn't that Vicki as the virtual person in the architectural walk through, etc."

Answer to part 2.....NO....that's absurd.  I also would love a link to some of this pics that are so badly done.  They may have been striving to create a good mesh with excellent topology, and, I'd have to see the pictures to make up my own mind as to the actual quality.  People at CG talk are often more into showing off their "models" than actually playing around posing them.  Over all, you get far less kudos for badly done work at the cg sites than one gets here,.