I definitely sympathize with this concern, but I wonder if your criticism of the low-effort critiques is itself overly harsh/unpleasant (e.g., using lots of rhetorical questions, bold/italics, and exclamation marks). If the goal is to encourage people to keep writing criticism but make more of an effort on things like showing respect and using proper punctuation (instead of driving people who currently write low-effort criticism away from the site), a gentler approach may be more effective.
ETA: I think aside from the discouraging effects of low-effort criticism on high-effort post authors (which BTW is not necessarily very strong for every post author—I think I personally am not very bothered by these), even low-effort criticism is valuable in terms of truth-seeking, by giving some idea of what kinds of criticism can be plausibly made against the main post and offering authors a chance to respond to them. In this case, Raemon himself ackowledged the value of Unreal’s comment with “The epistemic concerns here (i.e. warping your perception of the mission / home / resistance to giving up either) are definitely the strongest argument I can see for making sure there is a non-mission-centered village.” (Full disclosure: I had upvoted Raemon’s main post, Unreal’s comment, and Raemon’s response, before seeing this post.) So I personally would rather encourage such commenters to make more of an effort, rather than drive them away.
even low-effort criticism is valuable in terms of truth-seeking
True, but from the perspective of conditioning, it is still a punishment. On a System-2 level this kind of criticism provides valuable information, but on a System-1 level it discourages further writing. So we get a few mistakes corrected… and then the author stops writing.
I think the problem here is with the asymmetry: among nerds, cheap praise is considered low-status, but cheap criticism is high-status, or at least socially acceptable. Therefore the cheap responses are overwhelmingly negative, even if the article is mostly good.
(By the way, I suspect that the prevalence of akrasia among nerds is a similar process, only people are doing it to themselves. Giving yourself negative feelings when you notice a mistake, but no positive feelings when things go right, does not result only in making fewer mistakes, but generally in doing less.)
I definitely sympathize with this concern, but I wonder if your criticism of the low-effort critiques is itself overly harsh/unpleasant (e.g., using lots of rhetorical questions, bold/italics, and exclamation marks). If the goal is to encourage people to keep writing criticism but make more of an effort on things like showing respect and using proper punctuation (instead of driving people who currently write low-effort criticism away from the site), a gentler approach may be more effective.
ETA: I think aside from the discouraging effects of low-effort criticism on high-effort post authors (which BTW is not necessarily very strong for every post author—I think I personally am not very bothered by these), even low-effort criticism is valuable in terms of truth-seeking, by giving some idea of what kinds of criticism can be plausibly made against the main post and offering authors a chance to respond to them. In this case, Raemon himself ackowledged the value of Unreal’s comment with “The epistemic concerns here (i.e. warping your perception of the mission / home / resistance to giving up either) are definitely the strongest argument I can see for making sure there is a non-mission-centered village.” (Full disclosure: I had upvoted Raemon’s main post, Unreal’s comment, and Raemon’s response, before seeing this post.) So I personally would rather encourage such commenters to make more of an effort, rather than drive them away.
True, but from the perspective of conditioning, it is still a punishment. On a System-2 level this kind of criticism provides valuable information, but on a System-1 level it discourages further writing. So we get a few mistakes corrected… and then the author stops writing.
I think the problem here is with the asymmetry: among nerds, cheap praise is considered low-status, but cheap criticism is high-status, or at least socially acceptable. Therefore the cheap responses are overwhelmingly negative, even if the article is mostly good.
(By the way, I suspect that the prevalence of akrasia among nerds is a similar process, only people are doing it to themselves. Giving yourself negative feelings when you notice a mistake, but no positive feelings when things go right, does not result only in making fewer mistakes, but generally in doing less.)