This article seems terribly confused. Of course academic papers are a terrible discussion forum. They're not supposed to be any kind of discussion forum.
Academic papers are supposed to be contributions to science. They take by definition a long time to publish because they need to go through a peer review process, and they are only interest to a narrow group of people because they typically advance the understanding of a very narrowly defined problem deep within their field.
Academics don't just sit in a dusty office communicating with the world through journal articles. We meet in conferences and work in joint projects, have informal discussion forums and correspond through a multitude of different channels. Many academics also have non-academic publications about their research.
Academic papers serve a very specific purpose and they do it well. Just because they don't serve some other purpose that you'd like them to serve doesn't make the process broken.
Academic papers are supposed to be contributions to science. They take by definition a long time to publish because they need to go through a peer review process, and they are only interest to a narrow group of people because they typically advance the understanding of a very narrowly defined problem deep within their field.
Academics don't just sit in a dusty office communicating with the world through journal articles. We meet in conferences and work in joint projects, have informal discussion forums and correspond through a multitude of different channels. Many academics also have non-academic publications about their research.
Academic papers serve a very specific purpose and they do it well. Just because they don't serve some other purpose that you'd like them to serve doesn't make the process broken.