And yet what he writes can be judged on its own merits. Only in issues of trust should character come into the question. I am most familiar with an attack on character being a technique that allows for a person to dismiss some writing without effort.

If someone with a mental illness writes a word salad, it can be dismissed as a word salad, not because the write has mental issues, but becasue the writing is a word salad.

That said, it takes time to read and judge the merits of a writing, and give a limit to our time we all develop heuristics to help us determine to help us avoid wasting time.