Academic papers fail as a Reddit-style discussion forum because they were never meant to be a Reddit-style discussion forum. If you need to discuss things with

Academic papers fail as a Reddit-style discussion forum because they were never meant to be a Reddit-style discussion forum. If you need to discuss things with people, join a mailing list or go to a conference or get to know them. The paper is not supposed to be the transitional step where you are bouncing ideas off people. I agree that academic journals should be open access. I don't agree that it is unfair for subject matter experts not to publish every crank who comes down the pike in every journal. If you want to talk about enforcing conformity as a bad thing, a discussion forum (particularly one with upvotes and downvotes) is the last thing you should use as a model. I guess you are more directly engaged with Less Wrong and Singularity Institute and other online fora which lack any academic credibility, but sort of pretend to have some.