Hi Tomos! Your second idea is lovely. I also would love to recommend a number of interested academics as commenter of some sort -- as long as their comments would be guaranteed some respect, and would not be edited and changed by others. We could set this up as a separate site eternal to WP, but it would make more sense to have it integrated with the existing project...
I wouldn't even encourage such academics to contribute themselves; it is far more respectful of their time to accept commentary and have other editors integrate those comments, cope with resulting flame wars and philosophical disagreements, etc.
- I am an academic my self, but I have to admit that I am a bit hesitant to recommend
some Wikipedias to some of my colleagues. It is because of trolling, flaming, edit war, and and other wild behaviors that are not for newcomers if they expect warm and respectable
-- :-------.-.--------.--.--------.-.--------.--.--------[...] +sj+