Right now, the incentives to get useful feedback on my research push me to go into the opposite policy that I would like: publish on the AF as late as I can allow.
Ideally, I would want to use the AF as my main source of feedback, as it's public, is read by more researchers that I know personally, and I feel that publishing there helps the field grow.
But I'm forced to admit that publishing anything on the AF means I can't really send it to people anymore (because the ones I ask for feedback read the AF, so that's feels wrong socially), and yet I don't get any valuable feedback 99% of the time. More specifically, I don't get any feedback 99% of the time. Whereas when I ask for feedback directly on a gdoc, I always end up with some useful remarks.
I also feel bad that I'm basically using a privileged policy, in the sense that a newcomer cannot use it.
Nonetheless, because I believe in the importance of my research, and I want to know if I'm doing stupid things or not, I'll keep to this policy for the moment: never ever post something on the AF for which I haven't already got all the useful feedback I could ask for.
Just wanted to chime in to say that this feels important and I'm happy you brought it up.