They don't have to degrade her in order for her to be under appreciated. The fact that people hated me so much when I expressed my opinion that she's one of the most well written anime characters is proof enough. They demand you to not go beyond the "she's a good character", if you try to label her as one of the bet characters it's immediately some sort of heresy. Apparently I can't have the opinion she's one of the best characters then. And no, I started becoming sharky only when people started bashing me for having said opinion, which they did.

Take a look at MyAnimeList that's been storing character data for the past 16 years, she's almost below the entire crew and it's the most popular anime rating site.