Joshua, I'm not sure how this is germane. At no point did I indicate that their feedback was meaningful in any way - either in the selection process nor in my own thoughts about my skillset. (Mom says she thinks I'm handsome, but I've never been on the cover of GQ.) Nor is judging the overall quality of my own work (compared to what an editor or "expert") might think (meaning germane to anything in what I've said - or even intimated).
I've made it pretty clear that I've only got my body of work from which to select (with no mention of the quality apart from it's better, relatively, now than it was the last time we produced a calendar) and that depth (quality) of that bucket is whatever it is in absolute terms (by the standard of an editor or "expert" here).
Of course mom puts fingerpaint art on the fridge - and is proud. Of course the master is more adept than the apprentice. Water is also wet and the sky is (sometimes) blue. But what's the relevance? What does it add? I can go on: The Pope poops in the woods and bears are Catholic...hmmmm...maybe I got that one wrong...
I think we've all always known that we're not as handsome as mom thinks we are.
So yeah, I'm irritated by that unpromted, irrelevant intrusion. It would be one thing if I were measuring my own lens with my own ruler and yelling around about the results. (Yes, that was a euphemism.) But I wasn't. I was asking a simple question about a particular element perhaps disqualifying a photo from consideration as something to keep - and subsequently described the medium that prompted the question.
I'm usually a live-and-let-live kind of guy. But in no world are comments like this relevant to anything I have said, asked, inferred, or otherwise prompted:
"All I am saying is that if anyone person, group, or forum in our case says you have a great shot, do not perhaps conclude you have something saleable. Them editors an be finicky."
"Hate to mention it but your friends, the people you give calendars to will, of course, swoon. That is why they are your friends perhaps. Be careful judging the overall quality of those pix."
Nor are they in any way edifying (nothing I can do with them given the construct I've outlined - here or ever). They're demeaning and nothing else. Tell me how to read, "...that is why they are your friends perhaps..." in a way that it doesn't come off as condescending. It's not innocuous or innocent. And it's pervasive. And the reason I don't do much on this particular sub-forum.