I will put in my 2 cents. I think sometimes people are struggling to find their grove and when they can't seem to find it they tend to think that people are out to get them. It happens to everyone. ( I know Marco is out to get ME! ) For an image to be good, it needs to have mad skills, or clean execution, or a very clever idea, or a beautiful design work, or it's really funny. It needs to excel in at least one of these categories. Look at Micose. He usually does stuff that is way out of the norm for this site and he gets recognized when it is intriguing, beautiful, or a clever idea, etc. I believe this site is < for the most part, honest in their opinions. If you try and sell a bunch of paintings at an art show and nobody buys them, you can't blame the people that did not buy them. I have seen many people give up because they decided to blame others instead of looking inward and I do believe that they do themselves a great injustice by not trying to look at themselves or listen to others advice. You can't take anything personal here. You should take the comments with a grain of salt and decide for yourself weather they are right or not, but be careful not to close yourself to critique. Maybe it's not the others that are being "closed minded", as you said.
This is not a judgment on you or your work. I think you are doing just fine. It is just my opinion to these thoughts. Peace and keep on choppin'.

"I wouldn't wipe my arse on it... thats another helpful one..."

Plus you can add a yankee slant by changing arse to ass..

and ...

an 'alabamy' angle by changing wife to cousin... (nothing... really ... oh common that one killed at the party...)

Sci's got a good point Cheryl. Most of my best feedback comes from members previewing an entry. I regularly give people (sci, sean, eve, DP, caf) a look at an entry before it goes up. In fact, I showed caf half a dozen entries yesterday, and she generously PM'd back a whole page of feedback on those. Thanks Caf! Of course I also get to see quite a few from people before they go up too.
I'm always a bit reluctant to offer criticism in the comments field on active entries though...after all, who am I to say publicly whether someone's work is flawed or not. But I am more than happy to offer feedback privately by PM.
As far as the comparison thing goes, I'm not really sure that I've seen too much of that, but remember it is a competition and people will obviously compare entries when voting....it's only natural.
Mikey and Rey are right too. It's not just about pure PS skills, there's tonnes of that here at PSC. It's also about art, interpretation, ideas, humour and 'outside the box' thinking. Winning entries often have that 'something extra'......that bit of 'oomph'!
Cheers,
Brad.

If nothing else here and the real world you develop a thicker skin over the fragile ego everyone has or you go run back to your mother, and have her give you your room back and never progress any further. Or you stand up and say I do good stuff and it's getting better. Then slowly proceed to what ever future awaits.
You hopefully learn that not many people in the real world care what anyone says about anything unless they agree with it. Also most people follow someone, anyone so that they don't have to make decisions on their own. Yet so many worry without relief of what everyone everywhere thinks of them and everything they do or say about them, Paranoia.

My non-expert opinion only. Feel free to disregard and please don't take it personally!

I wonder who marco consults for critique? the Gods! most likely