I think there is a difference between stories and world building exercises in terms of feedback, too.
If I'm doing a world building exercise like say 'Lands of Ice and Mice' which is literally just hundreds of pages of essays about crops and ways an agricultural society could theoretically form in the arctic, feedback is more useful. There's pages of that thread which is people riffing off ideas and looking at different areas of the world and that's fine because it's essentially a group world building exercise/history chat. In which 'hey, so this might effect this, what about doctor who' is part of the joy of the exercise.
If there's a narrative (even if it's a timeline format) then that can't happen. A narrative is much more of a story being told.
There is something of a culture clash in online AH forums where people who are trying to tell stories run up against an audience who are used to talking about history. Like on ah.com a thread that goes 'what if [this happened]' which requires reader input of that kind is in the same forum and with the same format as 'timeline: [this happens]' which doesn't.
But, I do think a lot is the author's fault. If you write an actual narrative with characters and plot twists, you clearly make it distinct as to what you're doing. Whereas if you borrow the tools used to talk about history, the faux history book, the timeline structure, the wiki box etc then you're inviting readers to engage it on a conversational world building level.
You're also, as
@Coiler says, not giving them an obvious narrative to engage with in terms of comments about characters and plot instead. Though to be fair, most of us are more knowledgeable about history than writing (I would 100% say that about myself) so it's natural that we're confident in critiquing or praising the former rather that latter even when there is a plot.
(Though, I do think well written characters absolutely will chime with this audience and get you comments about them rather than their historical role see the comments
@Sideways or
@Polyphemus get for instance. The comments on Lexie are very much about her as a character and so traditional writing group/fanfiction feedback.)