Saw the other suggestion re: critique, so offering something based on that. I second the emojis not being all that helpful!
I think that the giving good critique guidelines are good in theory! But I needed to go out of my way to find them, and, having had some unpleasant experiences trying to get critique both here and elsewhere, it might help to put them somewhere a little easier to see than a direct link from the Your Studio page (stickied to the top of the critique forum, a shorter version in a small window above the new thread or comment sections, etc).
The critique forums and the critique requests section also contain the same posts, but are treated differently by the site (the forums don't have that "giving good critique" pop-up); it might also be helpful to have the button on "Discuss" go to the latter rather than the former, or to have the site treat them as the same section (if that makes sense).
I'll definitely keep this in mind for the summer! :)