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I'd like to propose a different way of thinking about the problem (and I agree there are problems here).

Some premises:

- New users don't know how things work, so we need to **keep it simple**.

- Many non-veteran users are deterred by bad "people" experiences -- if your question is off-topic then ok no harm, but if people leave comments, especially public ones, that you read as criticizing *you*, that feels bad.  **Prevention is better than cleanup**, because first impressions matter.

- Many engaged community members want to lend a helping hand, but don't want to do redundant work or be part of a pile-on.  Posters also don't want to be on the receiving end of an unintended pile-on ("this is the 27th person who's privately told me that").  **If feedback is private, some sort of status information still needs to be public**, like "3 users have given private feedback in the last 24 hours".

- Not all users want to receive private feedback; some would prefer everything be public.  (This has already been demonstrated in a comment.)  **People shouldn't be required to engage in private discussions.**

- People giving private feedback benefit by being able to work together.  We've seen enough "joint debugging" in comment threads to know this.  **Private does not mean 1:1.**

I envision a system where, by default, a new post gets a "private-ish feedback" thread (after we have threaded comments).  A poster can turn it off, by post or as a user preference.  For a post that has this thread, people with some ability to be determined (to keep out drive-by trolls) can see the thread and participate.  Other people can see that the thread exists -- something conveying that private discussion is happening already.  

For questions, the asker should be able to directly put the question on hold while addressing feedback.  (If the owner alone put it on hold, then the owner alone can reopen it -- otherwise people won't do it.)

The question isn't hidden or relocated; that'd be more confusing than helpful, I think.  I'd like to think that the combination of it being on hold and the visible presence of private feedback would be enough to signal to other community members "we're working on this; be back later".  "Regular" comments wouldn't be affected; this is about adding one special thread, not removing anything else.

There are a lot of details to work out were we to take this approach, but I want to get feedback on the high-level idea before tackling them.  Thoughts?