[nl]

The only danger is that the true obnoxious nature of some academics would be aired in public.

I'm not sure how you can say that. Generally, the comments on the vast majority of internet sites are pretty low quality, and even insightful and useful ones are difficult to find because of all the noise.

[return0]

The vast majority may be useless, but a significant minority are valuable (e.g. maybe ~ 10% in HN). Why throw away that value?

[rubidium]

Because right now we have a system that works. Email the author. I've ALWAYS gotten a response.

[arcanus]

I think email (private communication) will always be useful.

However, some general questions being publicly available would be also arguably have utility.

[curt15]

There are already established forums for discussions, like mathoverflow.

[nl]

Why throw away that value?

Because others can extremely negative - to the point where they may put some people off publishing in open forums.

The very small amount of value that they may add is easy outweighted by a single person not publishing.

[return0]

I do not believe that. On the other hand not all publishing is valuable: http://www.nature.com/news/the-pressure-to-publish-pushes-do...