[mountainair]

I do a lot of very informal writing online, mostly in Subreddits related to my field, but also in comments on news articles at places like Wired and Ars. I find that you learn almost as much from the (non-insane) comments as you do from the articles themselves. This is probably the same reason I use/read Reddit. I do have some more academic writing published on Academia.edu and SSRN, but I don't engage in discussion there. Best of luck!

[mercurialshark]

Awesome, thanks! Published work is - whether the author thinks about it this way or not - now considered just a foundation/framework for ongoing discussions. If you can filter the batty (which I hope we can help with), then the comments are really an addendum to the original article.