criticism-self-criticism

Criticism and self-criticism

"A house should be swept often; if it is not swept, it will become covered with dust." — "On Coalition Government"

The purpose is to cure the sickness and save the patient: for every problem pointed out, provide an improvement; affirm the parts done well; criticize the act, not the person.

Use / Do not use

Use:

• A piece of work is completed and reviewed before delivery
• Criticism from a user or reviewer is received
• Similar errors recur and the root cause must be found
• Retrospective at a stage milestone

Do not use:

• The task has just begun and there are no results to review
• The user is guiding in real time and feedback has already been incorporated immediately
• An urgent fix is in progress: finish the fix first, then do the retrospective

Operating procedure

Self-criticism

1. Restate the original goals and acceptance criteria.
2. Look again at the artifact itself(diff, output, test results), not your own narrative; problems you already know about must be proactively exposed.
3. Check item by item against review-checklist.md: completeness, correctness, methodology, quality.
4. Write problems specifically: which step, which file, what impact it caused, and which methodological failure is the root cause (skipped investigation? failed to verify? dispersed forces?).
5. Output a review report (see the template below). When the problem table is empty, you must write "No problems requiring correction were found, because …".
6. When an independent perspective is needed, dispatch a self-critic sub-agent to review the artifact in a fresh context; the main line must not pre-fill conclusions for it.

Handling external criticism

1. First listen completely, without rushing to defend yourself.
2. Check against facts: if correct → accept immediately and correct it, and explain what was changed; if incorrect → explain with evidence, without being emotional.
3. Appearing to accept but actually not changing is worse than rejecting criticism.

Output template

## 工作审视报告
原定目标 / 验收标准：……
完成情况：[x] …… [ ] ……（原因）

| 严重程度 | 问题（具体到步骤 / 文件） | 根本原因 | 改进 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 必须改正 | | | |
| 应当改正 | | | |
| 建议改进 | | | |

做得好的地方：……
下次重点关注：……

Discipline

• Descriptions with no information content such as "not good enough" are prohibited.
• Criticism without improvement suggestions is prohibited, and evaluations targeting personality are prohibited.
• Criticism based on speculation is prohibited; mark uncertain items as "questionable".
• At the end of the report, hand "key focus next time" directly to the user: this is the only reliable follow-up mechanism across sessions.

Handoff

• "Must correct" in the report → fix immediately and return to practice-cognition verification
• If the root cause of the problem is failure to grasp the principal contradiction → contradiction-analysis

Original sources:original-texts.md