You start with a clean slate, and your first few posts determine how you will be treated after showing your "art". On that note,

• If you show up here acting all high and mighty, shut the fuck up, you're an idiot.
  
• If you try fishing for compliments with comments like "here's my crappy sprites" or "I know they're awful but(...)", be prepared to have to deal with the fact that everyone on the forum will think you're an idiot. (because it's true)
  
• If you get all whiny and talk about how you suck after receiving a few blunt comments on your sprite, expect to lose a large portion of the respect you may or may not have already had. If you need an example, look here

Instead, look at your sprite and try to figure out why it sucks. If you still can't figure out why after some time has passed, CALMLY(that's the important part, don't want to get added to the list of threads up there, do you?) reply to the post requesting that the poster be more specific

Do not complain about them or claim they are "trolling", you will almost instantly lose all respect and any chance for regaining that respect that you might have had

Chances are, you suck. Not even kidding, you probably suck. You'll get advice, but you need to get past the part where you're not actually good at all so you can accept critique recieved here with a level head.

You're just stupid. Seriously, you're just stupid.

If you come here to get feedback on some sprites and you honestly want to become a better spriter, you should be mature enough to accept that there are members you dislike as well as like.

The tool you're using has absolutely zero impact on how capable you are as an artist, trying to blame your problems on MSPaint or whatever program you're using will just make you look childish and ignorant.

when you're trying to give critique but aren't sure exactly how to explain what you have a problem with, try your best to explain what you mean WITHOUT coming across as arrogant, or a smartass (that's the important part. You can try to explain what you mean, we don't have a problem with that. What we DO have a problem with is people who behave like bnewton did in this thread).

And that's only possible with what was mentioned above.

Jesus Christ, would it kill you guys to upload your sprites there and post them here? Attachments are incredibly annoying, especially when I have to download the sprite only for it to end up being a shitty recolor. Not only that but it makes the poster look like an amateur. All you have to do is make an account, upload the image, and paste the link here. Make sure you put it between [.IMG] [/IMG] (without the period)

Please use these sites:

http://www.Photobucket.com
http://www.Imageshack.us
http://www.Pixeljoint.com
http://www.Tinypic.com
http://www.majhost.com
http://www.imagehost.org
(If you have any other sites, post them here) I personally prefer Photobucket.com
*Image links must end in PNG. GIF. BMP. JPG. or any other file type for images to show correctly.
*NEVER EVER POST JPG!, BMP isn't recommended either. PNG or GIF is fine.

**Users who use attachments in the sprite discussion board without a legitimate reason will recieve a warn. Your attachment will also be removed from the thread. You have exactly one day from the time I take action to fix the problem or your topic will be completely locked.

^^^ See this? Right here? I'm going to start strictly enforcing this rule. There is literally no excuse to not see this part of the rules now.

but have nothing to bring to the conversation other than a reworded version of something that's been brought up before, DON'T FUCKING POST

make sure that your tag isn't more than a note off in the corner of your sheet, make sure you're not making a point to show of "BLANK SPACE OMG XDD", and make sure your tag doesn't have any annoying recolors completely irrelevant to the actual sheet doing something near your tag and making it take up more space than is needed. Starting now, these will all be deserving of a light warning.

If you feel like posting any of these here, you will be warned. No one wants to see these. They're all decent starting points if you're trying to get into pixel art and spriting (Except tracing. That has always been stupid and will continue to be for the remainder of forever.), but they're not anything to show off. If you're going to post something here, make sure that it's custom.

While these exact words weren't used, it was still implied. If you're new here, people are generally mean to you; hopefully you understand this by now. We don't do it 'just because', we do it to see if you're willing to listen to comments given to you no matter HOW harsh they are, and attempt to dig something useful out of them. We do it to see how far you're willing to go (in a sense) to get useful critique.

Will you cut and run after receiving a few harsh comments? Or will you suck it up and try to pull any shred of helpfulness out of comments that seem to be utterly useless if you look no deeper than their face? How you handle this 'test', so to speak, determines not only how well you fit in here, but how well you're able to accept critique in general. Because in order to improve in any way shape or form, you DO need to be broken down again and again, the more you're broken down, the stronger you become, this applies to anything, art included. The more you learn to suck it up and try to dig something useful out of a comment, or to realize that you're NOT God's Gift To Art, the better you'll become and the more you'll improve.