What value do we add that would make users want to post their questions on our site, as opposed to reddit.com, quora.com, answers.com, and answers.yahoo.com? I realize that those sites are general purpose, and have a different mission, but they seem to benefit more from their parent organizations than we do from StackExchange.
Does anyone have any suggestions for what it is about our site that means people should come here for the answers to their history questions?
I'm not super familiar with those sites other than just as an occasional reader, but features that seem particularly valuable for this site in terms of history questions are:
Anyway, to me the value of the site is I just love reading about history, and doing so with a goal of generating a good answer is addictive. The risk of getting things critiqued and/or challenged by others makes me double and triple check things so I can cite references as needed, and dig deeper into topics than I'd have done on my own.
IMHO Answers.yahoo.com is a honeypot for ad serving.
Now admittedly, if we ever get out of beta, SE will probably have ads up here. However, the ads will exist to support the site, not visa-versa.
