Is it scripture alone?
Or must we entrust our understanding of the scriptures to those steeped in traditions and learning?
Or, simply, can His sheep hear His voice? For some odd reason, we prefer to outsource our understanding of God and His ways to the ‘professionals’.
The point is unless you become your own professional, you require some along the way. Unless, if I'm understanding you, you're saying scripture is not necessary either.
Tradition tells us that this is how we always interpreted scripture and how it has always been interpreted from the time of Christ and His Apostles. It does not supplement but rather complements.
the "professionals" is a wrong term -- a professional is like say Taize who interpreted scripture his own way. In orthodoxy, the clergy merely ensure that what is believed is what has always been believed since the time of Christ. the various doctors etc. from John Chrysostom etc. merely focused on and debated the deeper meanings of why we believed and practised what we did and do
For example, the Early Christians may not have understood why they broke bread each week, yet in the Didache (written AD 70) we know they did. They believed something that caused the Romans to say "these are cannibals, they eat the blood and flesh of their God" and Justin the Martyr had to refute this.
It is wonderful that you and we read through the Bible every year, but each time I read a book, I discover something new (unless I'm particularly thick that day, which is often), and more and more I realise how little I do know.
What you are saying of looking for comments etc. is somewhat the right track -- we read, pray and believe as a community, a community in Christ -- as individuals we are flawed, prone to error, incapable of even starting to understand the enormity that is God, which as a community in Christ we can start on this journey.
Since you take care to read comments by others, we too do that, but we don't limit it to the people of today, but read what Christians in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 6th, 10th, 14th etc. centuries wrote about and discussed about and debated about and we always hark back to "this is what the Bible says and this is what we have always believed that to mean" -- if someone say says that God says "no need for doctors", we ask if this is in the Bible, if the interpretations of the Word is what we have always interpreted it to mean? If it is not, then it is to be discarded
The "traditions" are no more than you reading comments of others, only reading the comments of those who lived at the time of the Apostles, who may have known them or their disciples. There can be no radical reinterpretations only a refinement of what we already know.
The "community" in the midst of which we read, pray, learn and worship God is the Church (it is not just the sub-shepherds)
That is orthodoxy