Different people have different proportions of bad things to accomplishments. If you’re always going to point out one of their accomplishments to balance out criticism, you give a misleading impression of what those proportions actually are.
Balancing out the bad against people’s accomplishments creates bad incentives. Not every bad thing is like “doesn’t treat fanfiction seriously”—if someone’s doing something that’s malum in se, I don’t want to balance off criticism against his accomplishments—if I do that the effect is going to be that crimes by accomplished people are treated more leniently than those by regular people.
At least two big problems I see:
Different people have different proportions of bad things to accomplishments. If you’re always going to point out one of their accomplishments to balance out criticism, you give a misleading impression of what those proportions actually are.
Balancing out the bad against people’s accomplishments creates bad incentives. Not every bad thing is like “doesn’t treat fanfiction seriously”—if someone’s doing something that’s malum in se, I don’t want to balance off criticism against his accomplishments—if I do that the effect is going to be that crimes by accomplished people are treated more leniently than those by regular people.