However, if you're lucky, you can find a honest user, but it's very rare these days. Comment threads (whether it's a forum, a video, an article...) have value when you think about it, specially if the comments are well-formatted (and this is important when having a debate). If you put format to your comment it's gonna be highlighted and if they're smart they'll do the same when responding to your comment. This has the potential to change minds, and on top of that comments are something that you never measure: you don't know how many have read them or how many have thought about them. These and the fact that people take their time when writing give value to the comments section.
Sorry, just going to disagree with this slightly. It is good advice in my opinion. The problem it runs into is that whole, "even if it's well formatted and valid opinions and points, it's going to be ignored anyway because people in general just don't want to admit they were wrong, or have to face the fact that they might have been wrong".
That is to say, you could have 500 really well formatted reviews all making exceptionally valid arguments and criticisms who legitimately want your product to improve... and the person this stuff is directed at will typically ignore it or get heated or emotional over the subject because "someone else is telling me that I'm wrong" or "someone else thinks they know better".
At which point, it really doesn't matter how good your point is. Indeed, most of the time on the internet, being an "honest user" grants you absolutely nothing. You just as well type in broken english, using cellphone text, hundreds of emojis, and never clarify any point for how effective it is and how it's approached.
People often respond to your well-reasoned points the same way they would respond to someone just trolling them by calling them names.
With that in mind, I'd like to offer my own advice to tack onto this one:
If you have an ego, you aren't cut out to be a creative. You're part of the problem.
If you can't handle someone having a different opinion without you getting emotionally riled up, you shouldn't be in business and you shouldn't be engaging in creative works for the public. You are ill-equipped to handle it, and you're probably a generally toxic person. If you can't handle being told you're wrong without attempting to hurt someone's character, rather than their ideas, you have no place in business or in creating stuff for the public. If you feel upset or attacked during a debate, you aren't equipped to be engaging in the public space. If you can't be bothered to address a point of view in a debate in a point-by-point basis, you lack the patience to be engaging in the public space.
The absolute best thing you can do when you interact in public spaces is to remove your ego. Your ego doesn't matter. Your feelings don't matter. You're here to get to the truth and the heart of the issues. Once you let your ego get involved, you become very much incapable of changing or even changing someone else.
This is advice nobody really follows.
And, to add another advice I don't follow:
It isn't perfect, so it's fine. Let it go!
Yes, and no. I'd rather get things right the first time than have to do them again. There's a point when you reach the limit of your skills and you need to let it go, because "It's the best it can be", and then there's all the rest of, "I'm just being lazy, so I'm letting it go because I don't want to deal with it anymore".
I am the sort that would rather check 100,000 boxes of fruit for a flaw in the design so that I'm sure they boxes won't break, than let that 1 box with a flaw go through and break on someone. Even if that fault only happens one in every 6,000,000. If those numbers get big enough, that 1 becomes 2. It becomes 50. It becomes 100,000. A flaw is a flaw. I'd rather we catch it and fix it and make sure it never causes a problem than just say, "Nah, it's only 1 in every 6,000,000, it's fine if it breaks. It's not a big deal". Yes it is. It's a big deal to the 1 person it broke on.
Anything worth doing is worth doing right the first time. That's my motto. So, I don't follow any advice I've ever been given that equates to "good enough".
I am not a fan of complacency. Or of people who endorse it. They are the same people the phrase talks about: "All that it takes for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing."
