[sktrdie]

Actually, as a young researcher, I find the complete opposite. Sites like researchgate or facebook or any other "comment-ie" thing is sort of superficial in the sense that even though you might get some comments, they're usually quite minimal and bad. On the other hand, reviewers for conferences/journals are sort of obliged to put time into it and dedicate to give you a proper review and most reviews I've received are of very high quality.

[tvawnz]

That is true, but ref reports can definitely be nightmares, especially in niche areas where only 3-4 groups qualify to ref something. And some journals can be particularly bad about the feedback, especially some of the lower tier journals, but I guess that's why some people go to the low impact journals...

I would also guess that most social media like comments would be "have you seen my paper vaguely related the topic", which is not ultra-useful.

But if you could somehow emulate the conference feel, where people are constantly walking up to you and saying "oh this is neat, I think Prof. X is working on something similar, you should find him," that would be optimal.

[mispy]

The comments SciRate gets at the moment are pretty decent, I think because people mostly just integrate it into their existing review process. https://scirate.com/arxiv/1501.07071 is a good example. If the community were to grow though we'd definitely want heavy moderation.

[tvawnz]

That does look like a refreshing exchange. The pessimist in me thinks it's a pretty optimal "showcase" example though :P

On a related note, don't some fields/journals (like pharmacology is in my head for some reason) require ref reports to be made public?