I think the problem with Janet's post, Nemo, was the same problem I see in some critiques - Janet was trying so hard not to offend any living thing that it was almost impossible for most of us to figure out what the hell her point was - the post was hints and nudges, philosophical wanderings, mysterious allusions to a thread that could not be identified, dither and thither. So everybody heard what they wanted to - responded to what they thought they heard and away we went!
I have this bad habit, which probably stems from my engineering and numbers/management geek background. If I am critting a poem I try to first provide an overview of my reaction, but - if I think there are a number of problems with the poem - I will bang-bang-bang - go through them with comments and suggestions. I make the assumption that that's why the poem was posted. And I also make the assumption that the individual posting the poem is competent enough and capable enough to evaluate my comments and decide which are worth thinking about, and which are nonsense and don't apply to the poem they want to write. And that I can crit in a businesslike way, and it's not necessary to mechanically insert a sentence of praise before each critique.
It is primarily the responsibility of the poet to decide which critiques to heed and which to ignore; and not the responsibility of the critic to worry about whether the crit will wrongly influence the poet. It is assumed that the critic is intelligent and experienced enough to understand what the poet is trying to do, and comment accordingly; and that the poet is experienced and capable enough to sort through critiques and deal with them without overreacting. As our Guidelines state, this is not a beginner's site. We should be worrying about improving the quality of critiques, not toning them down to make certain that nobody is damaged by being trated like an adult.
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