[Doug]

There are so many talented astrophotographers here that I feel I'm bringing down the standards that have been set.

Yeah? who are they? present company excluded.
One's best efforts are always excellent. Though there is always room for improvement

I find it discouraging to read an endless string of fantastic, wow, etc.etc., if I think the image could do with some simple processing to fix it up. In other words finding an image posted with heaps of well dones, I feel like I'd be being a bit of a killjoy coming along and saying something about the lack of colour depth, or alignment or noise reduction, flat fielding etc. etc.

Maybe there should be a Beginning Astrophotography section in "Beginners Start Here!" where us learners can post our efforts.

Who is to decide who belongs to the elitist group and who belongs to the pleb group?
Any dinky di Imager will admit the he/she is on a learning curve and IMNSHO anyone who thinks they have reached the top, need to have a long hard look at themselves.

jjj if you have any images please post them and share what you have. I for one have only ever seen one image that was so bad I honestly wouldn't know where to begin with criticism (not counting some of mine)
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Sometimes when I post an image I just say something like "enjoy". That does not invite criticism, usually I probably know more of the faults than anyone else will, but am not interested in trying to improve that particular set of data or effort.
Other times, if I'm open to critique then I usually ask for it, detailing what I think the problem is. That is not to say that I take unbrage at uninvited criticism, cause I don't.
Everyone has a valid point of view (if theirs is different from mine, they are just misguided that all.)

Leon I think I'm most comfortable with the "Comments/Criticism welcome" approach to signing off on an image post, that way no matter how many oohs and ahhs have gone before, 'constructive' critism will never be out of place.