I am becoming concerned about these comments on articles that seek to discredit them without putting in effort commensurate with the article itself. I saw another earlier today where someone claimed that a statistical test used in an article was not correct, but provided little rationale other than the claim. Perhaps the commenter was right, but it strikes me that I must be more careful in believing off the cuff remarks, especially when comparing them with research papers that have been written only through much effort and care.
I suppose this is just another variant on cheap criticism that lacks the kind of expertise and context as the author of the thing criticized. You have to treat it with even more skepticism than the original.
"without putting in effort commensurate with the article itself"? You're suggesting that in order to be allowed to criticize something on a web forum, one would have to invest months of one's time beforehand?
Your own criticism seems to commit the logical fallacy of "argument by effort" (and assumes that there can't be any shoddily-thrown-together research papers or ones written by outright cranks).
How about we judge both articles and comments on the merit of their specific content?
Besides, reminding people that arxiv is not a peer-reviewed source and does not by itself lend credibility to a paper does not even represent criticism of the paper itself, just some additional context in which to judge it.
I suppose this is just another variant on cheap criticism that lacks the kind of expertise and context as the author of the thing criticized. You have to treat it with even more skepticism than the original.