The galleries and the forums are simply like any other "social" interaction. Quite often you get out of it what you put into it. In the "hug club", or whatever you want to call it, people post images, and comment/rate on each others works as a form of social interaction. Nothing more, nothing less. If you want to get a lot of comments, you need to participate, and unless you know someone faily well, making true critical comments could very well be met with a less than enthusiastic response.

If you go to a party, or a company picknick, and run into someone you haven't seen for a few years, are you going to say "My gosh, what happened to you, you must have gained 50 pounds, and you look like you need to see a dermatoligist."? Possibly if they were a good friend, and they know your really saying "Hey, you don't look like yourself, whats up?", you could do this. But in most situations we either reserve the right to not mention how they look, or say something like "You're looking good and haven't changed much at all." The same is true here, even very well intentiioned constructive criticism can hurt people, many chose simply not to take the chance.

Plus, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Honestly, one quick look at Picaso's work, and I wonder why he is supposed to be a great artist. Then I think about it (the art work), and realize that no matter how hard I tried, I could never do something comparable. Then I begin to wonder why he would make something so "different". This leads to seeing the turmoil in his art work, and soon I begin to understand his briliance, his inner torment, and that regardless of how great his work is, I really don't like his style.

I guess what I'm trying to say is I really don't feel comfortable giving critical comments on anyones work here, unless they specifically ask for it. Just because an image may not live up to my expectations for what art should be, maybe it is exactly what the artist wanted. I do typically try to post a comment for an image in the gallery of someone who was kind enough to comment on one of my images. For me this can be a bit of work, because I do want to say something relevant and truly positive about the image. But, since I'm not a very prolific image poster at 31 images in almost 9 years, it isn't too hard for me to give comment reciprocity. But, for many, comment reciprocity must be almost a full time job, and if they are willing to, and want to, put so much energy into commenting on images, then why shouldn't they be able to, and in return get "pats on the back" for their images?

I post my images because the only person I can share my renders with in real life is my wife. By posting in my gallery here, I get a bit more unbiased view of my work, some validation that I have done something interesting/actractive, and occasionally some tips or constructive critizism that has helped me to improve. Since I'm not a prolific commentor, I feel like most of the comments I get on my images are probably from people who saw something they liked in the image, and felt it was worth leaving a comment for. I feel this is probably a valid idea, because the images I have posted that I felt were really good, get more views and comments. The images I've posted that I felt were good enough to post, but were missing that litle something extra, didn't get as many views/comments (with the exception of one - for some odd reason). In general, the number of comments/views and image gets helps me to get a general validation how good or bad my renders are.

Bottom line, the galleries, to a large degree, are an interactive social environment. To be popular, you need to work at it like you would in any social environment. If you want to measure how well you are improving your art work, you can get a relative idea about your success by the increase or decrease in the number of views/comments for each image in your gallery, relative to other images in your gallery (keep in mind here that the thumbnail is extremely important to generate interest and demonstrate the quality/style of the full render). If you want constructive criticism, that will be a bit more difficult. Possibly the best way to get CC would be to ask for comments about specific areas you would like to improve in the image.

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