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Criticism vs Constructive Criticism | 186 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Criticism vs Constructive Criticism
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, November 23 2012 @ 04:14 PM EST

I have been the subject of numerous criticisms. Probably everyone has. Most of the time, my response is:

    I can see how that's a potential, perhaps you can outline what it is I've done to give you that impression.
And ironically I get:
    Well.... I can't point to something specific at the moment....
I'm sorry, but that's not constructive criticism. That's just plain criticism.

And a person can neither defend a situation nor change the behavior to better the same situation in the future with that kind of criticism. By "defend" I mean to outline their perspective on the situation as it occurred because there is the chance the outside observer (who offered the criticism) was not fully aware of everything that was really occurring and ended up with an assumption that was wrong. After all... those offering constructive criticisms are human too - and there is a possibility they are wrong with their criticsm.

This is why I asked the question:

    What is viewed as "shrill" and "less considered" in the article?
Not even old-timers have the right to just criticise. And I say that as an old-timer.

And frankly, if the person that said the author came across as "shrill" can not point to something to support even the basic tone.... then perhaps what the person thought as shrill was simply in themselves. They saw something there that wasn't really there.

Like when a guy is simply being polite and holding the door open for those behind him (man and woman alike) and one woman calls him a chauvinist. Obviously the insult was in her own mind - not the simple polite behavior presented.

So perhaps the next time you see a "less reasoned" response in P.J.s authoring you actually identify that instead of raising a general comment with nothing to point to.

See what I did there? I analysed what I viewed as the situation, and presented what I saw was an issue and offered what I viewed as constructive criticism - pointing to a specific example of behavior to support the criticism - and offered a suggestion of how it could be better presented in the future.

Obviously - I could be way off-base with my analysis of the basis of your opinion and so my criticism (whether viewed as constructive or otherwise) could still be wrong. I'm open to correction myself of course :)

RAS

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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