Stop and look around

That still doesn't make complaining "the most useful form of helping" -- even if it's the current userbase, it's still the least useful form of helping.

And as soon as complaining turns into a rantfest, like we've seen so many of, it's still actively harmful. If a current user tells me "I hate what you did, I hate you for having done it, I think you're a blinking idiot for having done it", that that is in no way a useful contribution to the project, and it wouldn't all motivate me to go back on my decisions within the project. So it's distracting, impolite, improductive, hurtful and not helpful.

And whether criticism is actually widespread or just seems widespread because the same people are echoing their bile and spite on as many web forums as they can does make a difference. I've had one user post the same uninformed rant about Krita on at least three forums. He was stupid, or lazy, so he cut and pasted, which made the pattern very clear. But it's amazing how much time people can spend on their rants all over the place.