Dude (assumed from the Man after Shadow): I was one of the original MP3.COM members - like this site, but we uploaded music we wrote. Same deal. Get voted down by jealous freaks who couldn't write music at all.

 I was a member of a photographer's site - again, same thing. You upload your art (music, pics, words) and other like-minded souls rate you. Those who are threatened by your half-way decent stuff vote you down.

Kind of like life, where the assheads who diss you are trying to make themselves feel better about themselves. They belittle you to bebigger themselves (in their own eyes).  It's simply because they are too lazy to work on their craft like you have. So they diss instead of improve.

This site has been, by far, the most pleasant one I've been on. At least a whole lot of you out there have been nice and constructive. On MP3.COM we had people with TENS of logins and they would attempt to post with different personas. Vote you down and them up and leave stupid critiques like "You suck".

The photo site had some constructive criticism and a whole lot of voting down. That site had it together a lot more with a "rate the rater" system wherein you could tell what the rater usually rated. So, in effect, you could see that new 3/10 came from someone who never gave more than a 5/10 to anyone.

This ain't the perfect site. Hell I wrote new stuff that never even showed up - philly even posted a comment to the effect that they though I'd left. I had 4.8 stuff show up on my profile, but not showing in the contest. And it was follow-up stuff, so it should have been there.

 Anyway. I almost left twice now. But I need to stay here to 'hone my craft'. You don't have that burden (you already write really well). But I think several of us would love to see you stay and egg us on..... but if you gotta go, you gotta go.