>My question these days when I read such article, "What has the author done that is equivalent?" There is rarely anything to be found.

The thing about critique is that you don't need to have made an equivalent project/effort/artwork/whatever to be able to critique it with a valid objection.

You just need to be able to spot an actual issue.

Sure, some might think they've spotted an issue when there is none. Or not understand that the issue exists for a reason (e.g. engineering tradeoff).

But those are orthogonal to the subject.

The key is that critique can come from any source, and it doesn't need someone to have done something "equivalent" or to have specific credentials to be valid.

The latter can at best serve as a rough filter to throw out some noise. But they will throw a lot of valid critique as well, which can come from everybody, including a layman.