Current talk pages are extremely unfriendly. I think they should be abandoned and replaced by more "natural" system of posting.
You mean, not a wiki? I think not.
I agree talk pages must remain wiki style for three reasons.
First, adding another system for talk pages makes users learn another system and that makes things inherently more complex.
Second, talk pages are intended to help people make articles, and therefore the requirement to learn wiki syntax to post on talk pages just keeps out those who wouldn't take time to learn to contribute to actual articles.
Ever since Ward's Wiki is that there is some minimum requirement to participate -- namely the ability to figure out wiki syntax. This is not hard, but it does require a little effort. And many have argued that this is one of the reasons that wiki's can maintain a higher level of discourse than newsgroups and web based discussion groups.
Third, an important part of the "wiki way" is refactoring, I have refactored a number of large talk pages removing the dross, keeping sustentative contributions, and putting it all together to flow more naturally. This is only possible because of the flexibility of the wiki system.