Now, at first glance this may seem orthogonal to what you said—which was about how much effort went into the criticism, rather than how much went into the post—but note that evaluation of a criticism as “low-effort” is relative. If I write a very well-researched and lengthy post, and you write the median comment (in effort, length, etc.) in reply, that is “low-effort” relative to the post I wrote, yes?
This implies that criticism which is low-effort relative to the post it is responding to, should not only not be held to a higher bar, but in fact that it should be held to a lower bar!
That having been said, it is of course good to discourage bad criticism. But the point is that “how much effort went into this” is simply orthogonal to quality—and this is true for posts as well as comments.
So, we should discourage bad posts, and encourage good ones. We should discourage bad criticism, and encourage good criticism.
We should not, however, encourage high-effort posts merely for being high-effort, nor should we discourage low-effort criticism merely for being low-effort. What matters is results.
And note that the fact that low-effort criticisms are “more likely to be based on misunderstandings or otherwise low quality” is irrelevant. We can, and should, simply judge whether any given comment actually is a misunderstanding, etc., and respond appropriately.
As clone of saturn points out elsethread, criticism of high-effort posts is especially valuable.
Now, at first glance this may seem orthogonal to what you said—which was about how much effort went into the criticism, rather than how much went into the post—but note that evaluation of a criticism as “low-effort” is relative. If I write a very well-researched and lengthy post, and you write the median comment (in effort, length, etc.) in reply, that is “low-effort” relative to the post I wrote, yes?
This implies that criticism which is low-effort relative to the post it is responding to, should not only not be held to a higher bar, but in fact that it should be held to a lower bar!
That having been said, it is of course good to discourage bad criticism. But the point is that “how much effort went into this” is simply orthogonal to quality—and this is true for posts as well as comments.
So, we should discourage bad posts, and encourage good ones. We should discourage bad criticism, and encourage good criticism.
We should not, however, encourage high-effort posts merely for being high-effort, nor should we discourage low-effort criticism merely for being low-effort. What matters is results.
And note that the fact that low-effort criticisms are “more likely to be based on misunderstandings or otherwise low quality” is irrelevant. We can, and should, simply judge whether any given comment actually is a misunderstanding, etc., and respond appropriately.