I understand some cant, dont want to, or feel uncomfy with the plethora of mails that fill their boxes from the ebots and wonder "where's all these responses to my art then?"   Thats natural and reasonable.  Yet there is a basic alternative.  Simple, and rather effective for those who feel the need.

This group, though led by Karen, is not as I see it (i could be wrong) filled with boatloads of rules and regulations.  Far as I know,  you can take off whom you dont want, keep who you do, and add others to your own favorites list, who aren't on the main list here who wants critiques, right?

Then if you feel the pressure, go to your last few uploaded images, take a tally of who's commenting.  Say the last five to ten uploads you've done.  Takes a few minutes but write down those that have commented on them.  Go to your favorites, remove those that don't comment, keep those that do.  How about that?

There is no laws I know of of having your own private group of friends amongst yourselves sharing critiques.  This way, your mail is only giving you in return those uploading artists who regularly comment to YOU. (this list will probably be different for everyone).

Why does this work?  Because there might be 20 artists on the list, they regularly load images but i DON'T care for the genre, and would be unlikely to give them good critique.   I'm not sure how people will take that, and the you comment and I comment back phillosophy, but it seems reasonable to me!

No one should be "forced" to do anything, especially something that makes them feel uncomfy.  I agree totally with that.  For the next two months for that matter, I'll be having a booth at renaissance faires so I wont be here a whole lot, but I'll be back and get to what I can when i can (so there may be delays on my own comments).

And, totally up front with everyone......  I have become VERY lax (and almost unresponsively dead) to those that post 3-5 NEW images a day.  I see this a lot, the same names over and over, many a day.  Again, some might not like it, but I do have to say this.  I have a hard time investing that amount of time to view, scrutinize and formulate a critique to something that a whole lot of time wasn't put into in effort.  I do generally get a "sinking feeling" being asked to consider images, that are "mass produced" if you will in that kind of hasty fashion.

The only time I accept that is seeing WIP in front of it.