Moshe--

You raise valid points. There also some other points to consider. I am one of those who posts minimally here, although a few of my significant photographs can be found in the archives. They were posted before I made the decision to mostly stop. Several factors contributed to that decision.

Many of my photographs are high resolution images with a significant amount og fine detail. Some are stitched panoramas of multiple high resolution images. There is no way that my original intent survives the downsizing required to make them fit the forum's upload restrictions.

Most of the photographs I have taken over the past few years have been at school for the yearbook or other internal usage. I am not allowed to share images including students, and I will not violate the privacy of teachers by publishing their likenesses.on the forum.

I have still not completely decided whose opinions I trust and whose I do not, nor whose comments would be helpful and whose would just be distractions. Since I do have a cadre of trusted friends who are accomplished artists and historians and scientists and teachers, I have chosen them as my "share partners." We have open discussions of each others' work.

The pragmatic reason I don't post here is that I'm not interested in having my images scraped and circulated and perhaps having their ownership stolen.

As far as participating in discussions of equipment, technique, and process, the jury is still out on that. There are a number of subject areas in which deeply imbedded misinformation makes learning more difficult than necessary and performance less effective than reasonably expected. Fads and trends further complicate the effort to achieve best practice. Photography is one of those. I would really like to be part of correcting errors and making better photographers. I do not know that this forum is a reasonable place to spend a lot of effort to work to make that happen.

Some people like to talk about things that interest them. Things like equipment, photography techniques, post processing or asking questions about things they don't understand. That is the primary reason for the Main Photography Discussion. When I was 17 I couldn't wait for that Friday night when I could cruse down to the drive in, open the hood on my '49 Ford and show off my new Edelbrock manifold with the 3 Stromberg 97s. If I had the money now to buy a high end mirrorless camera and I wanted my piers to know about it, I would probably post it in the Main Photography Discussion section.

However, if I wanted my piers to think I had improved my photography skills, I would say nothing about the new equipment. I would use the appropriate bells and whistles that came with the new camera and post the resulting photos in the appropriate section. And yes, I don't care what the experts say, I believe that up to a certain experience level it is first the camera, next the lens and finely as skills outgrow the hardware then and only then is it the photographer.

Finally, it my belief that a substantial number of posters to UHH have obtained the level of competence where equipment no matter how high tech it is exceeded by their skill.

When I first came to UHH I thought it was a photo sharing network. That's how I have thought of it ever since, and how I describe it when talking to people about where and what I do with my photos. I guess I will have to re-assess my thoughts on this.
I enjoy sharing my photos and I enjoy seeing others photos. That's what I'm here for. I do enjoy some of the conversations that come up, but that is always as a secondary consideration. I'm not a gear expert. And not even close to an expert on the computer side of digital photography. I don't understand very much of that, and really don't want to except when something wonky happens that I have to engage with to be able to get back to what's important, which is the photography.
I do agree completely with the original poster, Moshe, when he says that taking criticism from someone who doesn't post photographs just doesn't work very well for me.

When I first came to UHH I thought it was a photo sharing network. That's how I have thought of it ever since, and how I describe it when talking to people about where and what I do with my photos. I guess I will have to re-assess my thoughts on this.
I enjoy sharing my photos and I enjoy seeing others photos. That's what I'm here for. I do enjoy some of the conversations that come up, but that is always as a secondary consideration. I'm not a gear expert. And not even close to an expert on the computer side of digital photography. I don't understand very much of that, and really don't want to except when something wonky happens that I have to engage with to be able to get back to what's important, which is the photography.
I do agree completely with the original poster, Moshe, when he says that taking criticism from someone who doesn't post photographs just doesn't work very well for me.

First off, thank you MosheR for sharing the photos of your travels. I'm enjoying them as are many others or you wouldn't be ranked #3 as a Topic Starter. And I like that you are ranked #3 because of your photography, not because you just post links to all kinds of unrelated stuff.

I like this site and was drawn to it for many reasons. I appreciate looking at other's photos and I like that I can share some of my own. I also appreciate all of the photographic knowledge that many of you have and that you are so willing to share. Gear tips, processing tips, travel tips, on & on. I feel like many of you are actually my friends, even though we have never met, or even conversed. You have helped me progress on this great & exhilarating photographic journey.

I like the gear but I don't obsess with it. However, I'm glad some of you do, because I've been helped by some of what you've shared since I got here in 2013. It's helped me to choose a camera & lenses, processing (Lr & PS), a good tripod, a great scanner (Epson V600), and other stuff.

This is truly a great & helpful site. We just have to realize that some of us are ornery old codgers, and some of us have bad days and it comes out in how we respond to others' post here. I can live with that. Thanks to all of you for making this what it is!

(I fixed my earlier typo.) Actually, I don't care much who shares / doesn't share, unlike our OP. I care less about the skill level than their interests, do they like flowers, birds, people, trains, beaches, so forth. Their interests are a basis for a common bond over that interest. From there, we can enter into whether they are good at those subjects, and whether they have tips to share or are looking for ideas to improve upon, where maybe I have some ideas to share there too. Maybe not.

When I hear from people out of the blue, I've learned (realized) that the overall majority of the community is really a mass of silent observers, never posting anything anywhere. I say this for our OP -- MosheR -- that you can 'investigate' any member via their UHH profile. You may / may not realize that every member name is a URL link to their profile. Just click that name and then list either their 'topics created', or the log of all their 'messages posted' that is a merged list of their topics created and replied. I use this aspect of the site to find people's image history. Or, to find out if they mostly hang out in the attic. These insights help me judge whether that member is worth even considering for whatever they've replied to me or to the discussion, in general.

Larry, to your comment, I've posted extensively on privacy and control issues. Surely, you've seen my coaching on the need to resize your image resolution, linked below. Regardless of the image resolution used, you don't have to store the file for download. This goes a long way toward controlling the reuse (taking) of any image from this public-facing site. You can also 'link' images from other sites, rather than posting them directly to UHH. For the most part, my images are linked from my Flickr pages, rather than JPEGs attached directly to UHH.

Recommended resizing parameters for digital images