One reason haven’t been cited yet, maybe because it probably won’t convince anyone to move: because it’s way better for async conversations. Way way better. And it’s better than anything out there, including reddit.
That being said, this is a great topic to me. Lots of reasons I haven’t thought of bringing in when I evangelize it to people. They sound so much more appealing!
I’d argue, from what I could compile, the following are the top ones, which aren’t cited anywhere in the home (I think it have way too technical pages).
For community managers:
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Monetization. The forum is yours, it’s open, and you can do as you please. This is to forums what wordpress was to blogs.
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SEO. You can find stuff in it with Google. Even in google groups you can’t find it as easily as in discourse.
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Yours to keep. Being open source means all data is yours and all business is yours.
For users:
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Works on mobile. Unlike most of other ones.
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Best search. Easy to find with its own search tool, creating topics will bring likely duplicates, related topics on the bottom, and google friendly.
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Filter noise. With categories it’s easier to browse and seek for new subjects or topics. Also in a big community you can select a few specific categories of your interest to filter all noise out.
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Your identity. Not different from any other forums, but different from google, facebook and linkedin, you identify yourself in a different way, the way you want it. Be anonymous if you need to. Disconnect from work or family. Or connect if you want.
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Keep conversations going. No matter for how long. Without disruption. Categories, starting new topics, moderation, innovative thread reply without removing timeline. There are many many tools in place to make conversations flow.