Some comments on your post:
my past experiences on here have made me somewhat gun shy. I'd be very surprised if anyone on these boards hasn't been through that phase/stage. It's part of learning how to deal with other people, and anyone can still sometimes make a mistake no matter how long he or she has been here.
I've commented in many of the threads on here. Your current post count is 47 in over a year. That's hardly scratching the surface. In contrast, there's a new guy in one of the forums I participate in who joined this month and is already over 150. I have a much better feel for him, his interests, and what he's about than I do for you.
I imagine that a lot of early posts went disregarded because no one knew me. We see all newcomers. Then it becomes a matter of who continues on and actively participates in the community. Unfortunately, even though you've been a member for over a year, you're still in basically the same position you were when you first joined - a newcomer in the early post stage.
And if that's the case, why don't we have an introduction thread for this specific board? It's not needed. People who actively participate become known and know the other players pretty quickly. If I want to get a feel for a real newcomer, I check out his or her profile (and hope it's filled out, and if it's not, that also tells me something.)
Think about it this way - when you get a beta read, you want the read to be from someone whose opinion you trust and value. You should want specific things from that read - grammar issues pointed out if there are any, clarity issues, involvement of the reader, etc. If you spend some time in SYW, you'll see that different people pick up and comment on different things, but it's rare for one critter to hit everything, and, not all critters (or betas) are equal. But as IdiotsRUs said, by sticking around in SYW she found a good beta.
And the same thing goes for us as far as offering to do a beta for you in exchange for a read of our WIPs. We don't know how you crit, what you'd pick up, whether you'd be decent in handling our time periods, etc.
We're not trying to be mean, just trying to help you understand the situation. We all have a lot invested in our writing and we all are short on time to do the things we need with our own work. But, if one of the old hands here asks me to read a chapter or synopsis or query or even the entire manuscript for them because they're stuck, I'll make time - because I know they'd do the same for me and I know they'd be able to tell me what I need to know.
One of the adages I think about frequently is - you get out of anything exactly in proportion to what you put in. And that's true of a community. Puma
