This is one of the more serious pain points I notice (thankfully only occasionally).
Obviously getting some visibility is important for people launching new projects. Sometimes adversarial comments seem to be motivated by commercial rather than technical reasons.
Don't force me to fight an asymmetric warfare battle against malicious authors to participate.
"Weak" is the operative word. Being right doesn't do you much favors if you can't communicate it. In this context, "looking" weak is being weak.
No. Function over form.
One synthesis is this: wise strategies depend on the audience composition and time scale.
More people should learn wise ways to quantify future rewards. Reinforcement learning, economics, and finance cover some simple ways. One way is a constant discount factor, but it is not the only nor best way.