With all the shenanigans with exchanges and DDOS against pools, it's only a matter of time till the forums fall victim to something...
Would SSL by default help avoid "some" problems? Probably.
A cert is very inexpensive nowdays. I'm sure ppl would chip in for this purpose if we were asked to do so.
Chip in? You realize the people who started BTC have 100,000s of BTC right? Wildcard cert is like $200.
So what? If the call came, ppl would chip in. Or you can lobby these people you are talking about to pay for it. Go for it!