Anyone who isn’t a soulless automaton like me reads articles for the entertainment of reading fiction, not to pick apart everything they read, a process that can make the overall read less enjoyable. For me, I can’t really help but notice all the issues and I do try to comment on most articles I read, but because of that, the articles that I don’t have any gripes with end up being pretty top tier since I’m not sabotaging my own reading experience.
In my experience, improving with writing is more about practicing and experimenting than an intense focus on learning methodologies. I started writing for SCP in 2017 when I was thirteen years old. The stuff I wrote was ass. So many tacky meta gimmicks that lose all novelty the first time you read an article with them, dooming any future reads which use the same gimmick.
Tangent, but I think the flash fiction genre is especially enticing for authors to rely on gimmicks. If you don’t have the knowhow to squeeze depth into a short to medium length article, it’s pretty enticing to try splat the couple of ideas you have onto a google doc and try filler in the missing links, or with gimmicks, a single idea and maybe a few short branches from it that don’t go far into exploring the facets of an idea.
But yeah, anyone who’s practiced a skill would tell you how much more important practice is than you think. It’s strange that we don’t usually realize it. We have all mastered some skill or another that required a ton of practice. You’d think we’d see that and be able to intuitively know how to do the same for other skills.
Yeah, you can only learn to ride a bike with practice, but practice isn’t going to teach you proper posture so that you don’t round your spine, and proper road safety so you don’t break your spine in half. But you can’t become a proficient biker from reading about the scientific dynamics of bike physics and then getting just 20 minutes of practice.