Personally I don't like galleries where onlye quality work is published, people that is starting has the right to be seen, to be criticized and have the right to improve their work, and a gallery in a forum is the perfect place to do this, if you want a more exclusive gallery you always have the website gallery where only selected images will be published, so a forum is a forum, and IMHO everyone whould have the rigth to publish whaever they want, and if they think a project they are doing is finished even when we may think it's bad or unfinished, I think they deserve to publish it because probably is done with a lot of effort and trying their best, so if you don't like it don't answer to the thread or don't look at it, but IMHO if you want an elitistic gallery go to 3dtotal and enjoy the gallery, a bit boring IMHO.
Also there is nothing wrong in seeking for attention if you are a newbie, most of the time the only way to improve yourself is hearing what others sincerily think about your work because your mother just knows how to say "it's beautiful, it's great! my son/daughter it's a genious!" when you know it's not true and it's not useful at all hehehe.
Just my personal point of view.
However a diferentation between proffesionaly work and personal work could be good, but not neccessary im my opinion, in the end I've seen A LOT of proffesional projects that were ugly, including some of mine, you know, budget, time or client... so this is no guarantee of quality at all.
Cheers.