No seriously.....I follow a few other forums....some are the "great shot" type and others strive to give honest critique. The image of the week type thing is common and there are repeat winners who are definitely pro's. Some of these make their living traveling the world selling workshops. Very hard to "compete" with someone who is regularly visiting all the best photo locations on the planet! I think I could take similarly great images but I can't afford the the time and travel.

Since the playing field isn't level I am not a huge fan of the "contests" either but if it becomes part of this site I would continue to post and contribute here as I really like the community.

I have been thinking about developing a standardized scoring system for images. Maybe 5 or 6 parameters that could be given individual points on a scale of 1 to 5....adding up to a total score. Things like composition, creativity, level of uniqueness and maybe technical skills like exposure or sharpness or post processing. Such a system could used by any viewer to "score" an image and then a comment section would be attached so the viewer could give tips how to improve in future images.

I think many people do not feel qualified to critique photographs and we do not, generally, want to hurt anyone's feelings. The images we take, decide to keep and process for posting are important to each of us and it's easy to take criticism personally so a critique needs to be crafted the right way to help someone without hurt feelings. Likewise the poster of an image has to have "thick skin" and not get upset at the criticism. Finding that balance is tough sometimes and I thought a scoring system might help.