A few years back, I took the second semester of a photography class with a new instructor. The first semester we had critique sessions, but people were so supportive it was hard to see where I needed to improve. The new instructor changed that in a hurry by forbidding the words 'What I like about your photo...' or the equivalent. We had to say what we didn't like. He said every photo can be improved. It really opened my eyes to the defects in my photos, and I got better in a hurry. Some of the other photographers were very talented, and had great photos from the start. Their photos improved even quicker.

I try to look at the community on Hacker News like that. There are a lot of very talented people here, and very busy. It seems most people here don't want to waste time to writing or hearing what's good about something they wrote or did. They've gone beyond the stage where they need hand-holding. People are working on the edge and they want to get better, whatever that means to them, and are willing to endure some criticism to get there.

Postscript: I love the fact you almost never see a TL;DR attitude on HN.