Their sometimes can be a thin line between slander and criticism, in which the second one is very important. I'v seen plenty of people just wanting to see the good things and too afraid to talk about things that are wrong (not talking about a specific subject here). But only by addressing the more serious issues one can improve.
As for @minnowsupport, it is an automatic votebot so it's hard to keep record of who gets upvoted. For that matter I'v seen people using it for single pictures they ripped of the internet...
I agree, I saw this battle growing from the beginning. So I was watching.