Your original question was about Skool’s success/popularity. I don’t think the platform itself is doing anything novel or uniquely interesting. Instead, I think the success is from meeting the moment in terms of responding to demand for a platform that can host a monetized course.
I would say any differential in engagement has less to do with something technical and more to do with the topic/specific influencer. A sufficiently popular influencer can maintain an engaging platform whether it’s Skool or Discord or Discourse or whatever.
Maybe Discourse could note some of the features on Skool, but frankly I know very little about the platform outside of just the quick impression I got browsing it now