Instead of a Forum, wouldn't a wiki, blog or other type of CMS make more sense? You still can add a comment and interlink-functionality. With a CMS even better,

Instead of a Forum, wouldn't a wiki, blog or other type of CMS make more sense? You still can add a comment and interlink-functionality. With a CMS even better, as you can comment directly to a paragraph or even sentence. Or do you mean the river of news-style, the frontpage, maybe also with upvotes, so people can better manage attention to papers?