Looking out for the things worth encouraging is a lot harder and a lot more useful than being a smart-arse.

Anybody who's spent any time around folk-music will know how people can learn and improve over time, often amazingly so. And being encouraged to keep going is an important part of that.

And the other things is, how many people can think of singers, whom they really admire now for qualities in the way they sing, and what they sing, which the first time they heard them, they thought were dreadful, because they sounded differently from what was expected?

I remember once a friend pulled out a record her husband had brought home from a trip to America. "You must hear this, it's absolutely terrible". The singer was (then) young Loudon Wainwright III, and it wasn't - but it took time to tune into it.