The thing about games that introduce completely new modding scenes is that it takes quite a bit of time to get the ball rolling on their communities. I can't say anything about HPL2 since I didn't have anything to do with it, but to be honest, the showing that I've seen come out of the Steam Workshop thus far is about what I would expect - a handful of rushed and feature-incomplete mods whose main goal was to either actively explore the engine or to just get
something done. The game has only been out for 4 months, so thinking there to be any high-quality mods at this point would be expecting a lot.
I do feel for you when it comes to the general attitude regarding constructive criticism on Steam Workshop. the big thing that bothers me about people right now is that they think the terms "alpha" or "beta" can mean anything from "releasing tomorrow" to "just started working on it today". This creates a big issue when uploading v0.000001a versions of maps that are literally unplayable, but when people say so the creator hides behind the statement "it's just a beta" like that is supposed to explain everything. But I'll stop myself before I get on that particular soapbox.
The point is that you shouldn't stop handing out the constructive criticism just because the general reception of it has been less than brilliant. If the owner of the mod accepts the criticism, then both their mod and themselves as a modder will get better for it. If they don't, then they will learn very soon that the modding scene is not the kind of instant gratification environment they thought it would be. Neither of this is the fault of the reviewer, whose only task is to get his honest opinion down to share, no matter how positive or negative it might be.
(Though I should also add that it's always possible to express an honest negative opinion without being a dick about it. 
)
The only other thing I can say is to give SOMA's modding scene some more time to mature. I can't speak for all the other modders, but so far I've been keeping myself to small isolated tasks whose only purpose is to learn the extents of the engine. Now that I have a more firm understanding of it, though, I'm ready to start working on my own mod that I hope will raise the bar for quality going forward as well as get SOMA mods the kind of exposure they need. All we need is for one (maybe two) quality mods to get played by a big Youtuber, and we should be back in business.
Also regarding the video game journalists, I wouldn't really give them a hard time. The fact that someone over there found a SOMA mod that they thought was worth writing an article about means that the interest for SOMA mods is there. It would be fine at this point for them to shine a spotlight on... mods of limited scope, let's say... because at this point, that's all there is. Not to mention that until we get more solid mods published these articles are what he have at this point to garner more interest in modding.
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