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Originally Posted by Unregistered
I am curious as to why you would want more people to participate in the forum.
I ask this because when I see people who are at a lower skill level posting, they are quite often ignored or receive little response. Apparently you must reach a certain skill level to get a decent response to posts.
Why is this so? Is it because those of you have progressed beyond that skill level forget where you started?
If these people were juried in, then their work was deemed acceptable. Yet the lack of replies tell a different story.
So I wonder why you seek more participation.
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I don't believe anyone here has forgotten what it was like to be starting out. Many many accounts have been posted by young or new artists who got their start relying primarily on this Forum and who have been counseled and instructed through to very accomplished and successful stature in the profession.
And actually, artists of even high skill levels sometimes get a delayed or minor response. It depends on who is available and able to respond and whether they feel they have something to contribute.
The question as to why more participation is solicited seems to incorrectly assume that more participation by underqualified artists is being sought, and so the question as to why the administrators would want to do that misses the point.
More participation by qualified artists would be the ideal. And ideally, almost every member, by virtue of having submitted work for peer review and having been given posting privileges, is qualified as well to actively participate, including the offering of critiques, whether extensive or more tightly focused.
But most of them do not actively participate and, so, for example, requests for critiques may go wanting. The administrators of the site, several of whom might be unavailable at any given time due to work commitments, or vacations or holidays, can't carry the whole load. Therefore it would be desirable if more qualified readers could be encouraged and persuaded to become participating members. Then there would be fewer and fewer orphaned paintings or drawings, simply because there would be more people willing to have a go at commenting on another member's work, or offering other technical suggestions.
During a period of time when I was able to be much more active on the Forum, I used to go to the critiques area and deliberately scan new threads to which no replies had yet been made. I can't speak for whether anyone else -- administrators or members -- does that these days, but it did help keep "goose eggs" to a minimum. Anyone could adopt that practice, still -- it doesn't have to be moderators.
A lack of responses can't be taken as a judgment that the work of a juried member is "unacceptable." If I'm available, I'm much more likely to critique something that needs work (that is, that's not yet "acceptable") than something that is highly polished, but there are exceptions. As Sharon mentioned, there are some members from pre-review days who have been given very extensive critiques and incisive recommendations for improvement over a long period of time, but who continue to post work with the same problems, over and over again. When I see a somewhat dated thread with "0" replies, I often check it out but with the presumption now that it may be one of those cases, because a post that doesn't elicit at least some minimal response is rare. If it is one of those cases, then as I suspect is the practice with other prospective critiquers with limited time, I accept that I've already said everything I can in the case in question and I move on. That is very much different from ignoring him or her.
Again, the ideal would be for a larger body of qualified members to accept a kind of apprenticeship relationship with the lesser accomplished -- something that is actually highly instructional for both parties. That might be accomplished through greater membership numbers, but the question, really, is how to successful rally the current membership to contribute more. If every member committed to one critique per month, the site activity would skyrocket.