Visitors' poll

[Cynthia Daniel]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I'm also a "frequent lurker". I really enjoy the forum and stop in once or twice a week; it's intelligent, the work posted is very good,( often excellent), and it's nice to visit a forum of dedicated, trained artists. There's a different attitude amoung the members - it's serious and professional. I have no issue w/ the process of jurying in members, I beleive it's what keeps the integrity of the forum intact.

I'm glad you find it valuable. The jurying process became necessary when many were registering and posting who had not even a beginning of drawing basics - the Forum was growing so fast that the demands for critiques started to overtax our resources. Those professionals who do critiques were and still are few in numbers and their contributory nature and time became over-taxed by posters who likely would never become professional. So, we had to make a decision. I think that some see the Forum as a separate, stand-alone entity. However, from the time I conceived it, it was always intended to be a reflection of the main site.

A suggestion - perhaps there are compromises that would allow those who are shy, and those who aren't sure they're ready, to ease into participating without introducing a burden upon the forum.

Limit posting to the the purely professional forums to those who have been juried and made full members. This would include the professional business and critique forums where unprofessional behavior and responses could be distracting if not outright harmful.

Allowed the unjuried to become limited members with priviledges that allow them to reply to existing threads (in the remaining forums) but not to start new threads.

Perhaps allow a single forum to be completely open to posting and thread creation by limited members but make this forum password protected like the critique section is now. This would allow limited members to introduce topics or questions that others could address, but it would provide some protection from search engines.