There are innumerable curmudgeonly hacks in the world (particularly on the web), and when you look at their work, you realize they aren't really achieving any sort of excellence and their opinion isn't very valuable.
When I read a commentary or critique from someone I don't know (virtually), the first thing I do is look at their website. If I don't think their work is good, I substantially discount their opinion. If they don't have a website that shows something of their work (even a flickr site) I substantially discount their work even more. This method applies whether the person has 2 posts or 2,000 posts at LuLa or DPR or wherever.
The same goes for gear reviews. When I look at a gear review, I look at the person's portfolio to see if the operate their gear at a high level.
This is my version of put up or shut up.
Gee whizz.
Woe is me - no website.
"Obviously" zero credibility.
Actually an opinion (critique) is just that - an opinion. Whether it is worth anything or has any credibility at all lies in the ability of the recipient to recognize the said worth in the critique - not some arbitrary external value test such as - does the author have a website themselves.
Bernie Madoff had a website as well and apparent credibilty - suckered a large number of apparently financially sophisticated individuals to sacrifice themselves to his greed.
Storm Financial (an Australian investment company) also had very good websites and a similar ponze scheme to old Bernie there and also went belly up taking countless millions of Dollars in investments with them.
Truth is truth, credibility is credibility, opinion is opinion, no matter what form it takes.
For me personally I am in no hurry to set up a website or even post images onto Flickr and Marc's post is definately no inducement.
If and when I see value in doing these things I will do them.
On a slightly different tack recently I posted in response to a question about LuLa forums that the great strength of this forum lay in the incredible diversity of individuals who were members. With regard to their potential value-adding contributions to the forum any "cookie-cutter" type approach to their contributions would run the risk of disregarding anyone who doesn't think the same as the one applying the cookie-cutter.
I really don't find it very difficult to appraise the comments about my image posts. I don't care whether those individuals post images themselves or not (although most do). I often try out the suggestions - some work and some do not. In one case a suggestion indirectly helped me solve a problem with an image that I had been battling with for about two years.
Occasionally, someone will just "bag" an image post with no attempt at being constructive. It really doesn't take a rocket scientist to work this out.
I think balance should be the watchword here.
Regards
Tony Jay