You've got to keep in mind the nature of the beast that is Poser. The best selling Poser items and figures are females and thsir accessories. Most of the clothing items are sexy attire for the female figures. When I asked for a list of favorite artists a few years ago, most of the recommendations were for artists who primarily did pinups. Look at what the mods pick to highlight works they think are going unnoticed: there are a fair number of pinups. Take a look at DAZ's handpicked galleries--more pinups for the most part. That's what draws a lot of people into trying Poser/DS and it's not going to change.

It's not much of a surprise to me that a lot of pinups make the "highest" ranking lists. Take a look. It's not all that's there. In the current top 100 rated gallery images, there are five landscape photos in the top 18. Rochr has the #2 spot and he's one of my fave digital artists. A ZBrush fantasy male model is #1. There's also a beautiful BlacKeri painting and a toon image in the top 18. And yes, there are a bunch of pinups.

There are a few images that are top rated that I'd kind of question if there were some shenanigans going on. That could just be my particular tastes. For the most part, the stuff getting high ratings is better than what I'm producing and I'd like to think I'm a halfway decent Poser artist. Overall, the images that are rotating through the highest rankings deserve to be there. Cheating can occur, but I don't really see it happening right now.

If we don't like what's going on, it's up to everybody, who wants to see more variety, to do more to help promote the images they think are deserving. Images in the top listings get around 75-180 comments or ratings. With this topic getting a couple hundred views, there are enough people looking that can help make a difference to highlight a worthwhile image. Somebody could open a topic on the best digital landscapes, the best horror, or whatever types of images are of interest to bring some eyes on the works that are here. Keep in mind that the rankings also apply to the various categories. It's possible to look up the landscape genre and see the best rated landscapes. That doesn't mean that there still aren't a lot of great artists going unnoticed. They'll remain unnoticed if somebody doesn't help them get noticed.

There's no perfect system. A lot can be done within the current system to bring more variety to the top rankings.

My visual indexes of Poser content are at http://www.sharecg.com/pf/rgagnon