I think it's fair to criticize the article itself. That's different from criticizing asides such as the presentation. You're free to disagree with that criticism, but complaining about the fact that people voice it is similar to the thing you complain about.

> it gets really tiring reading this kind of side-tracked comment thread in like.. every post.

If someone is of the opinion that something constitutes low quality, then a high volume of such writing is no reason to stop criticizing it, but on the contrary a reason to oppose its normalization.