Another member of the Swrm team here. Thank you for your detailed feedback!
Re: 1) Although we are aware of dribbble, Swrm addresses a fundamentally different issue: Getting an honest, helpful critique of one's work.
While dribbble may be a great platform for showcasing finished design work, it has a natural tendency to promote only works which it considers "best of the best". This is reflected in its feedback system, where comments are most often overly positive. Swrm is built on the realization that good design work is generally the result of a lengthy, iterative process rather than a flash of genius at the hands of an especially "talented" designer. By focusing on the process, we want to enable anyone to continuously improve their work.
Re: 2) Making designers and critiquers "come together" is one of the top items we're working on, especially to encourage critiquers to provide constructive feedback.
I'm not sure whether you considered "lurking" to be one of the "two separate behaviors", but besides encouraging active participation I think this is just a general property of people on the web.
I agree on your remaining points – Thanks again for taking the time.
- npm for dependency management; notable package:
- jstransform for transforming ES6/ES7 & JSX to JS
All on a heavily React-based stack.