How to write a critique for a research paper?

Note: this is an active post and I’ll be updating it as I receive feedback or find helpful illustrative examples.

One of my many awesome advisors and teachers, Daniel Abadi, made us write critiques of research papers in his graduate database systems course. It was an excellent exercise as it allowed us to:

1. think deeply of the work,
2. create a summary that we can later visit whenever we need to refresh our memory of the work or even to write the related works,
3. think about new research problems or different research perspectives on our current work, and
4. practice writing (and believe me you need the practice).

If you read a paper and you like it (or dislike it), write a critique! Adrian Colyer has a popular blog where he critiques research papers in systems and ML.