The merits of this site for me are, 1. sharing thoughts on music or other stuff, if it comes up. 2. Finding collaborators, I dont need them, but I see its value for finding people to write songs with, especially for lyricists. Some folks would not have any collabs if not for this site. 3. Networking

But this quote: "I’d simply take this opportunity to salute and thank my fellow members of the JPF community. I remember when I posted my first song here, with great trepidation and reluctance. . . it was pretty much crap—me on a guitar, single track recorded over my Mac laptop mic . . . I tell you honestly, if I got the type of blunt, harsh reactions that perhaps I deserved, rather than the encouragement and kind, supportive feedback that I did receive, I might never had the courage to post again."

Look what you wrote "it was pretty much crap—me on a guitar, single track recorded over my Mac laptop mic"

That doesnt make a song crap, but its perceieved as crap because people want to hear recordings. Recordings are not songs. And I think people have figured out, that the best way to make people think your songs are good and you;re good, is to have good recordings of the songs. Thats not true at all.

If the song was good all you would need is a vocal good enough to hit the melody and clear enough to be heard. But when people do that, they dont get the same responses as somebody whos putting up polished tracks, thats why they go through all the rings to get a recording.

The only people who get "picked on" are the people who have bad recordings or bad vocals. No matter how good or as equal their song may be, the will get dings from the posters, and others follow suit, because they believe its ok, since it sounds bad.

If you really want to see how good your songwriting is try stripped down recordings. But dont be surprised if its not praised like better recordings are, which is a different thing than songwriting. Home recording forums are better for that, and whats funny is, you wont see any of the people responding there saying a word about the song, they could care a less, they critique the recording.