I dont think its the techie in me so much as its the diplomat in me. I could give specific examples if I knew what areas you felt you were expert at.
If someone reads you a paper that they think is good enough to get published but you dont think so, then there are alot of response you can give.
You can say it sucks, and walk off.
You can say it that in your opinion it needs something more, and walk off.
You can say it could use some improvement and at the same time give specifics.
You could give specifics and make some possible suggestions of wording changes.
Of course the easy thing is to say it sucks and walk off. If it doesnt change you can say "I told you" over and over and over. Choosing a different way of approaching it is probably as simple as how good a friend they are and whether or not you really want them to look at what you are saying. This is even more true if what you are pointing at are some lame jokes that the writer doesnt feel is a major point to the paper at all.
I do not consider myself a programmer. But I have worked with programmers and I know that you can often meet them half-way (usually called psuedo-code) then they will see the answer and convert it to real coding. It doesnt take a programmer to talk in language which trys to cover many possibilities using "if this" "if that" "but not this" although having been a parent can help
