But why would you even try going for criticism of an article before even reading it?

I speed read. I didn't see go. I went word search for go, didn't find it. But, a fair comment. Critique demands care.

Is speed reading just skimming?

Speedreading is something used by delusional people who think that reading is just inputting words as fast as possible. Slowreading (taking your time to fully understand and reflect on what you read) needs to become a thing. But that isn't as ~distinguished~ as saying "I can read at X words/min" or "I read Y novels/year".

Skimming is useful, because you don't necessarily want to read an entire page if you're looking for one thing. Wikipedia pages are an example of where you might want to skim until you find the relevant section you're looking for.

In fact I skim many articles on HN to decide if they're worth reading or not. If they are, then I go back and slowread the entire thing before making a comment.

I originally wrote skim. I changed it to speed. I therefore lost again since speed reading is less worthy than skimming which is less worthy than slow reading.

But, I am winning at losing. Nobody can take that away from me.