However, that doesn't mean their criticism isn't valuable. The world simply isn't simple and one can always add caveats that are worth realizing and knowing about. Actually, a lot of times these criticisms come from people that do have domain knowledge, which is why they feel qualified to make the comment. The fact that many more people can criticize something doesn't mean they will.
Secondly, I don't see a lot of 'trashing' happening here, so I'm not sure what your paragraph on 'people with a bug up their ass' is referring to. The top-voted critical comments are mostly good comments. Perhaps a purely additive comment should be ranked higher, but that doesn't make these critical comments bad.
If 1% of readers would 'trash' an article and that trash would get voted up, this place would not be worth reading. It is, so your numbers don't add up and the point doesn't hold.
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Secondly, I don't see a lot of 'trashing' happening here, so I'm not sure what your paragraph on 'people with a bug up their ass' is referring to. The top-voted critical comments are mostly good comments. Perhaps a purely additive comment should be ranked higher, but that doesn't make these critical comments bad.
If 1% of readers would 'trash' an article and that trash would get voted up, this place would not be worth reading. It is, so your numbers don't add up and the point doesn't hold.