I think how important these criticisms are depends on who the intended audience of the essay is -- which Gwern doesn't really make clear. If it's basically for SIAI's internal research use (as you might think, since they paid for it), tone probably hardly matters at all. The same is largely the case if the intended audience is LW users -- our preference for accessibly, informally written scholarly essays is revealed by our being LW readers. If it's meant as a more outward-facing thing, and meant to impress academics who aren't familiar with SIAI or LW and who judge writings based on their adherence to their own disciplinary norms, then sure. (Incidentally, I do think this would be a worthwhile thing to do, so I'm not disagreeing.) Perhaps Gwern or Luke would care to say who the intended beneficiaries of this article are.
For myself, I prefer scholarly writing that's as full of first-person statements as the writer cares to make it. I feel like this tends to provide the clearest picture of the writer's actual thought process, and makes it easier to spot where any errors in thinking actually occurred. I rarely think the accuracy of an article would be improved if the writer went back after writing it and edited out all the first-person statements to make them sound more neutral or universal.
I just finished the first draft of my essay, "Are Sunk Costs Fallacies?"; there is still material I need to go through, but the bulk of the material is now there. The formatting is too gnarly to post here, so I ask everyone's forgiveness in clicking through.
To summarize:
(If any of that seems unlikely or absurd to you, click through. I've worked very hard to provide multiple citations where possible, and fulltext for practically everything.)
I started this a while ago; but Luke/SIAI paid for much of the work, and that motivation plus academic library access made this essay more comprehensive than it would have been and finished months in advance.