Criticizing or commenting on the published work of authors or content creators is partially asymmetric. They are voluntarily putting themselves out there in a way people leaving a comment are not. This is difficult to capture in formal rules, but a rough idea is that creators should not escalate – which roughly means don’t respond with harsher criticism than a commenter used. (It’s fine if you ask first and they want something. Asking when unsure is a method others can use too. You can also often make reasonable guesses about what is OK with people, without asking, if know them and are familiar with a lot of their discussion history.)