I read other people's role plays all the time. Sometimes I do something called a "roast", where I gather a bunch of Skype people and we
sacrifice a role play's entrails to the Blood Gods dissect a role play's plot and characters. We always pick a role play at random, we never directly attack the people involved in the role plays, we never criticize the role plays publicly, especially
not in their threads. It's completely uncool to jump into random RP's for instance and shout "NEEERRRDSS!" So we don't. It's always done for humour (ex: Pointing out the tropes and stereotypes, the
"how to make a lady" checklist, sometimes awkwardly worded sentences will get a chuckle if read aloud literally, et cetera.) and/or for learning (dissecting a character to base parts, and disassembling plots, does bring with it sometimes the opportunity for me to teach new tools, learn new tools myself, or show where something didn't quite work, and how it would work if done correctly).
Roasts did show something rather stupendous.
Most role plays operate with the same cliché characters, regardless of length. Length held utterly no bearing to quality, sometimes longer role plays with terrible grammar were straight up difficult to
read leave alone understand. We also quickly learned that the people who were out to have fun and be honest with each other about their abilities and desires were far more fun to read--as we could tell they were having fun, regardless of their skill level--rather than some elitist snob, spitting at the lower
plebeians for not writing how their sunglasses glinted in the sunlight for four paragraphs. In all equality, I even go out of my way to roast my own stuff from time to time, just to ensure that whatever it is I'm dishing towards other works is something I can tolerate of my own.
If you have heard of it, compare to the
Best of the Worst, where we intentionally pick RP's apart to see their inner workings, for humour or for knowledge. We have some favourite characters even. The only section that it's kind of awkward to do it in is Libertine because then I have to ensure everyone in the roast is eighteen or older. Otherwise, it's all in good fun.
EDIT
@Tempest @Darog @Jorick @Hellis @Elendra are commonly at the roasts over Skype. You can ask them about it, if you like.