I feel like giving a critique to a co-worker or friend in person is very different from doing it online in a place like this. People are more apt to not take the time to add the spoon full of sugar because they have no personal connection with the people that they are critiquing. When you have to work with someone every day, you don't want to make them hate you by giving them an insensitive and overly harsh crit, but here on a forum you don't really have to deal with there repercussions of being harsh.
I think that you're right, in some respects. Giving a face-to-face critique
can be very different from giving a critique to a forum member who you've never met and probably never will. But it doesn't
have to be different.
The internet, and forums in particular, is notorious for bringing out the worst in peoples' etiquette. It is so easy to think of each person's screen name as simply a node made up of bits and bytes that only talks about whatever topic the forum is dedicated to, and has no emotions or feelings beyond what can be expressed with a colon and parenthesis.
It takes work and effort to realize that every one of us are more than a username. There are full lives, hopes, ambitions, fears, delicate and fragile egos, and ambition lying behind these posts. It can be so easy to simply write whatever quick and crass comment you feel is clever and crushing--but think about it for a second: do you really want to be that person?
I know I'm not saying anything new, and freenaturalgas I know you weren't making an argument in this direction. You clearly acknowledge that the 'net can make unfeeling clods of the best of us. Luckily, we can unclod ourselves any time we want to take the time and effort to do so. :)