The whole essence of this discussion is, that people used to academic writing are fully aware that what we are talking about here:
- forum discussions
- blog posts
have
nothing to do with academic writing.
Forum discussions are free exchanges of ideas and opinions. They live from the fact that different people contribute different parts.
Blog posts are expressions of free thought, which have undergone no review whatsoever.
Academic publications are not first discussed openly. Parts of them (presentations of progress) may be presented at dedicated meetings (symposia), which may provide valuable feedback.
Draft papers are submitted for review, and handed out only to a select few, who shall not disclose the contents.
After a positive review, the paper is published, has a date and basically a 'quality stamp'.
(This is in the interest both of the authors and the publisher. The publisher has the aim to sell the result and on the one hand requires quality and on the other hand usually does not want to see the material already generally known through the internet).
Just as an example, the discussion about the oak and ivy figure is a discussion about an
observation.
This is not an academic result. It is the point where the work starts.
Nobody cares who saw it first.
That is not *at all* an academic discussion that requires citation. In Voynich MS discussion fora it may be highly interesting, but at an academic level it is trivia. Especially since all pictures are freely available to the whole world.
Papers that only include hypotheses, speculation and no conclusion will never be accepted as academic papers. They are perfectly fine for blog posts.
If they do mention conclusions, one of the main points for peer review is to verify that the conclusions are sufficiently supported by the analysis that is presented. Nobody makes this check in blog posts.