Seems like it could just fill the role of the exploitative publishers if it takes off. Community does the work (scientists volunteer peer review), site gets the profit and locks everyone in due to network effects of being the hub for discussion. Eventually starts charging for boosting your paper with guaranteed return in citations etc. I'm just assuming it is venture backed due to having a team of advisors and stuff and about page being LinkedIn but sorry if I'm off on that and it is nonprofit or something.
While it says "a Stanford project" at the top, this could mean anything. It could
in particular allude to the fact that Stanford professors are advisor.
The advisors are well-known professors, but some, like Sebastian Thrun, have an entrepreneurial background, so probably a company sits behind this.
For me, the entire project gets a NO CONFIDENCE vote because I can't tell who they are, who pays for moderation (which they claim to do etc.).
I'd feel much more at ease if this was done by arXiv, or at least endorsed by arXiv.
Why wasn't it possible to contact arXiv and do this in collaboration with them?