My own attitude towards commenting is that I will only leave critical comments on work that I admire or feel some kind of a positive response to & I try to emphasize the positive as I gently slip in the constructive criticism. There's way too much art being posted here to waste my time commenting on images that I don't like at all & why would I want to bring both the other person & myself down by being negative & destructive?

I actually turned off ratings on my postings long ago because commenters were being too nice & always gave me 5's, which became meaningless. I also think that, unlike sports or politics, art should not be a competitive activity. Everyone has a unique point of view to express & there's nothing to be gained from numerically ranking an artist's work.

But the bottom line is that this is a public site & short of using obscenity or truly hateful language, anyone can say what they want & you have to be prepared to deal with it. I have had some very nasty comments on some political work I've posted & that's to be expected. I try not to respond to hate with hate & generally they will go away quietly when they don't get the reaction they expected. My advice is to be thankful for the positive comments you get, think about the constructive criticism you get & ignore the hateful stuff...

"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up." - Picasso