Keith,
Your Camera Club experience echoes mine 100%. I spent many years in the club, held every position, won every award and was very involved. I was even invited back on a number of occasions to judge at my former club. Perhaps like you, that experience helped shape how I view and appreciate images in a group setting. For example, I’m one that can be very nit-picky by pointing out things that can be improved - like the term “border patrol” where I always run my eye around the border looking for distracting elements. Or another one, “If it’s not helping the image, it’s probably hurting it.” And now “make the image the best it can be.”
For me, it was never about getting 1st place, but it was the process, and in some way, the competition, that drove me to improve my own photography. More importantly, it also taught me to appreciate the works of others. Not only appreciate, but also recognize the efforts and results of others. That’s partly where the sense of community comes in here at NPN.
In end, I echo the words of @Keith_Bauer and support retaining the weekly picks. Very well said Keith. If the consensus is to not have them anymore, I won’t complain though. One thing, if no picks, then it probably makes sense that each gallery only have one moderator… since there won’t be a need.
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More ringing of the familiarity bell! 
In lieu of a club, locals started a facebook group up here. I was pressured to join, but… Ugh… I’ve only posted a couple of times, last time noting that I’d used a 500. First response was “What’s a 500?” 
I can see this point. I am one of the few members who have posted more or less assiduously in People Objects and Places and in Humans and Fauna, both of which appear to get less exposure than landscape and avian. However, I am not all that concerned about it and I plan to keep contributing to those categories - in fact I posted another one in POP a few minutes ago . First, this is chiefly a Nature Photography site, so I see those categories as an added bonus. I post there because I enjoy making those images (every day more, it seems), and I feel that those who have similar inclinations will eventually look at them, even if they are a minority in NPN. I have arranged my interface such that by default I only see the categories that I am truly interested in. I have not found a way of adding POP and Humans and Fauna to the “Latest” page, which is my default view, and it would be nice if this was possible. I guess it would have to be added as a default, and then members (perhaps a majority) would have to mute it (as I have muted avian - I know this will generate hate mail 
but I’m not all that interested in bird photography and in this way I can focus on what I like). But again, this is Npn, so I can understand if there is no general desire to do this. For my part I will keep contributing to POP and humans and fauna regardless, as I truly enjoy those categories and know that eventually the message gets to like minded people.
I gave this some more thought and I found a way around this! Instead of suppressing this category from Latest, I instead muted the entire ‘Everything Else’ category by default. Anyone that wants to see those categories in their feed just needs to go to each subcategory and change the notification level to ‘normal’ or ‘tracking’ if you really love one of these categories. Hope that’s better!
An even easier way is to go to your preferences and remove these categories from the ‘muted’ section.
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David - that works great - thanks!
