Right now it feels like it’s an either/or choice between criticism and construction, which puts them in direct opposition, but I don’t think they’re necessarily in conflict with each other.
After all, criticism that acknowledges the constraints and nuances of the context is more meaningful than criticism that is shallow and superficial, and criticism that highlights a new perspective or suggests a better alternative is more useful than criticism that only points out flaws. In a sense, it’s not that there’s too much criticism and not enough of contributions, it’s that we want critiques that are of higher standards.
Maybe instead of trying to figure out how to determine the right amounts of criticism individuals are exposed to, we can instead focus on building a culture that values and teaches writing of good critique? There would still (and always be) simplistic or nitpicky criticisms, but perhaps if the community were better at identifying them as such, and providing feedback on how to make such comments better, things would improve over time.
Admittedly, I don’t really know what this would look like in practice, or whether or not it would make a difference to the experience of authors, but putting the issue in terms of killing Socrates feels like dooming it to win/lose or lose/lose solutions...
Right now it feels like it’s an either/or choice between criticism and construction, which puts them in direct opposition, but I don’t think they’re necessarily in conflict with each other.
After all, criticism that acknowledges the constraints and nuances of the context is more meaningful than criticism that is shallow and superficial, and criticism that highlights a new perspective or suggests a better alternative is more useful than criticism that only points out flaws. In a sense, it’s not that there’s too much criticism and not enough of contributions, it’s that we want critiques that are of higher standards.
Maybe instead of trying to figure out how to determine the right amounts of criticism individuals are exposed to, we can instead focus on building a culture that values and teaches writing of good critique? There would still (and always be) simplistic or nitpicky criticisms, but perhaps if the community were better at identifying them as such, and providing feedback on how to make such comments better, things would improve over time.
Admittedly, I don’t really know what this would look like in practice, or whether or not it would make a difference to the experience of authors, but putting the issue in terms of killing Socrates feels like dooming it to win/lose or lose/lose solutions...