What's the compelling reasons to use Askbot over its competitors?

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Most comparisons below are with OSQA. I've never tried to install Shapado so never compared it with askbot on the same hardware.

• Faster response time (well under 1s for most pages) because I rewrote all templates in a speedier rendering engine - Jinja2. Template rendering time decreased at least five-fold. Those templates will also help make custom skins - this is the plan for the rest of December.
• More reliable code, there are ~350 test cases in the automatic testing suite. Last time I've checked there were none in the other projects.
• Easy to install and instructions do not depend much on platform. Askbot installation uses standard Python packaging solutions.
• Active development - activity in the repositories can be easily compared. I've translated the Chinese CNPROG in the summer 09 and kept improving the program ever since.
• Easier to deploy with other Django apps for those who are interested.
• More of valid markup. I went through all pages I could with the W3C validator.
• Bugs normally fixed on the same day and support is less formal. You can report bugs right here on the forum.

Features that are probably absent in OSQA:

• Search by multiple tags and text query. The query can be modified while tag selection is kept. Also there is a "search as you type" feature - more of a toy but is kind of nice.
• inbox feature - the "red envelope" that pops up when there are new responses or flagged posts (for moderators)
• command line tool to merge, split and rename tags (will be added to UI as well)
• probably finer grained user level - admins, mods, regular users, suspended and blocked. All tested.
• ajax retag

Features absent in Askbot:

• re-posting comments as answers and similar
• no votes for comments yet.

There of course will be more good features, but I think it's better to get things done first and then talk about them. However, starting next week there will be a redo of templates and related things to make site customization easier.

As for the smaller user base - you see the project is still very active. Larger user base will only add motivation.

Askbot doesn't alert when question is answered

I will not repeat my answers to your question on the Shapado and OSQA sites, but I will add one thing: Evgeny is very helpful and responsive. I reported a number of bugs and they were all fixed quickly.

The community has a better feel to it. Not as big, but helpful.

Shapado did one thing very clever, they sent me an email asking me to answer your question (thats how I saw it, I no longer check those sites). How they identify that (I do not get any other email from them) I do not know.