It’s kind of just the nature of the beast that people are generally going to be really positive with their critiques unless specifically asked not to be. At least for people who are currently funding, anyway. We want as many new followers as we can get, so we don’t really want to step on each others’ toes and make people mad at us.
It’s kind of an unfortunate inevitability. Some people may say they want harsh criticism when they’re really overconfident in their story and can’t see there being much to critique, then when it comes in they still get defensive and take it personally.

Hi everyone. I’m new round these parts, but I’ve been part of the Scribophile community for a while. I’d absolutely second what @Wesley Reid and @P.H. James said. It’s a ’safe’ place to get your work critiqued, honest and fair. It’s also a good place to grow a thick skin and shed your ego. I know I certainly did ;-)

It really depends on the approach of the commenter.  I’ve had plenty of critical comments on my projects, but I am not sure if that’s because of a persona the person was trying to exude or if they really disliked my book enough to rip it to pieces. I will say that I tend to leave both types of comments, because I like to help authors improve -- especially when they ask for feedback. In the past authors really appreciated my tactfully pointing out elements of their samples that could be approved up. Again, it is all in the intent of the commenter.  Scathing critique doesn’t really help writers only demoralizes them, and it certainly doesn’t help funding projects get more orders.

Leave the positive stuff on the campaign page, but by all means PM the author if you catch something. Mine had a few tweaks that I fixed that way. In a way, crowd-sourcing puts many more eyes on your novel and work than you alone will ever catch. 

@P.H. James I’m actually familiar with Scribophile! It’s definitely a good way to get eyes on your draft if that’s what your looking for.

I definitely hope to see more activities like Draftshares in the future, and incentives from Inkshares itself would be pretty fantastic! For me, right now, the incentive to critique on Inkshares lies in building awareness. I’m working on a draft of my own novel, but before I ever post it I want as many Inksharers as possible to know that I care about the success of the site and my fellow authors as much as I care about quality writing.

The way things are now, I agree with Christopher. 

Funding authors tend to be the most active, and therefore the most visible.  So funding books naturally tend to draw the most attention and get the most exposure - which is a good thing and totally makes sense.  The understandably sympathetic reluctance to leave criticism on funding books sort of bleeds over onto drafts.  Also, authors here are really considerate, and don’t want to unintentionally discourage another author.  So it can be challenging for an active Drafter to draw attention, and organically get criticism from people browsing, or even those that follow your book.     

Plus, critiquing takes time.  Not only does a draft need to garner someone’s interest, but that person also has to be invested enough to take the time to provide constructive criticism.  Most important, there’s no real incentive to critique.  That’s why DraftShares was such a great idea. 

I bring up incentive because I was recently introduced to the site Scribophile (this is not intended to be an ad, just a resource I wanted to share).  They have a system where you earn points for giving solicited critiques that you can use to post your own work for feedback, and earn things like having your book featured.  It appears to be a robust community where people are pretty honest.  I suggest checking it out if you’re looking for an option to get your work thoroughly reviewed.  I’m definitely going to give it try

Sometime in the future, I think it would be of value for Inkshares to have some sort of similar, formal system of solicitation and incentive for critiques.  I wouldn’t think they have the resources to try something like that right now.  But as the site grows, it’s something I would personally love to eventually see.  I think that knowing there was an incentive to give and receive feedback would draw more authors, who would then potentially move on to the funding phase with a much stronger draft – hopefully increasing the chance of funding success. 

I would love to know what everyone else thinks.    

Part of it depends on the author, I think, but as a general rule it seems preferred that critiques be done privately. This is especially true for excerpts currently in the funding phase, since negative comments (however constructive) draw attention to issues both real and perceived, and affect how visitors view the project. I’d like to say that anything goes for a project that’s still in the draft stage, since that stage is supposedly for people to perfect their project pitch, but there again, it’s always best to be constructive.

I’ve reached the point where I don’t want to post any further excerpts of my novel on Inkshares (I have 8 up now). However, moving forward, I may want to share further excerpts with beta-readers for feedback. This could be done by simply emailing word documents or PDFs to the beta-readers, but I really like the interplay of having readers being able to comment  on other reader comments and highlights, like we get on Inkshares.