I don't know why you keep talking about the academic peer review process. The things I mentioned have their own peer review processes too and it's for the same purpose as you said.
> The point isn't to educate, it's to advance the knowledge of a small group (other researchers) that specilizes in a narrow area.
This is a poor excuse, and from experience, quite insincere. Nearly everyone links to academic papers in non-academic settings as "references" to communicate with a wider audience, and nearly no-one re-writes an academic paper afterwards for it to be more understandable.
> the stuff is just too hard
Nothing is "too hard". I can understand RFCs perfectly fine, even an RFC that I have completely no background in. I cannot say the same thing for academic papers.
> Most of the good work that is done will _eventually_ end up in a product, but it will take time.
This is also just wrong.
You seem to be blindly asserting that academic papers somehow magically get turned into documentation that is more easily understood by a wider audience. This requires either academics to re-write their own papers (this nearly never happens), or for someone non-academic (like me) to come along, understand the paper, then re-write it. My entire topic in this thread has been that the latter is grossly ineffective, and that other avenues are much more effective, but unfortunately not used in the academic world.