Quite a brouhaha in Australia this week, where theatre bloggers have not only been eating their own tails, but positively choking. Before you click off elsewhere at the prospect of another reflexive blog-about-blogs-about-blogs, though, the latest spat is interesting – promise.

Here goes. This week The Global Mail carried an interview with Australian theatre blogger Jane Simmonds. On the surface, its thrust is the standard-issue "everyone's a critic" line, but its choice of subject has riled some of the country's highest-profile theatre bloggers.

Simmonds writes a blog called Shit on Your Play. Until The Global Mail piece she did so anonymously. Her style is enjoyably brash, no-nonsense and crude. Think the West End Whingers, but without the camp charm. She explains her title thus: "It works on a number of levels: I shit on your play; you shit on your play; and shit on you for shitting on your play."

Simmonds's singling out has raised a number of questions about the ethics and etiquette of blogger reviews. "No one," writes Alison Croggon at Theatre Notes, "is arguing that Simmonds doesn't have every right to think and blog whatever she likes about theatre." However, she feels that The Global Mail misses an opportunity to explore the diverse possibilities of blogs: "blogging is much more interesting, diverse, porous (and long-lived) than is represented here."

Writer Augusta Supple, meanwhile, has real problems with the anonymity of Simmonds's blog, which she calls "cowardly". But she reserves her biggest criticism for Simmonds' aggressive and dismissive critical approach: "[Is this] the tone and style of the artistic conversations we should be having?"

Jana Perkovic goes further: "There is so little in this kind of review that could be of any value to anyone: to the audience, to the artist, to the production company, to the reader. It is largely opinion without analysis, plus critique ad personam, often amounting to the following argumentative logic: 'this play sucked because the director is stupid, and so 5 minutes in I wanted to go home and do my laundry instead.'"

Blogger reviews are rightly celebrated for their frankness, reflecting – it's supposed – genuine audience experiences and reactions. The sheer variety of different voices isn't a bad thing – in fact it's the opposite. And, as with mainstream critics, readers can find the voice they like and trust, be that a straight-talking consumer report or a verbose consideration.

However, surely bloggers must start from a position of respect for their subject. To spoil for fights and vent one's spleen, as Simmonds does so regularly, isn't criticism, but trolling. As the critic James Agate once wrote: "The business of the critic is to praise the good wherever he finds it, in proper measure or degree, and not to find fault because it is not better." Maybe bloggers should heed that mantra too.