if all they have to say that's nice about the post is a stock phrase that could be equally well applied to any original text, I'd prefer they skip it.

What I find interesting about this is that you're basically saying that their signal isn't costly enough to make you feel good. I wonder if that's the essence of the conflict under normal circumstances, i.e., by being direct (and thus not paying the additional costs of being polite) you are signaling that you do not value your audience as alliance partners very much, or that you are so far above them as to not need to make an investment in pleasing them.

Perhaps us geeky types simply prefer our costly signaling to be in the form of someone actually having thought about what we said. ;-)