Community is just as important as the Code

It's much easier to mange your inbox to your own liking than it is a forum. Flagging, sorting, filtering and deleting are all much more difficult in a forum.

It's also much easier to have all the things you do point at at one location than have to check a bunch of forums.

Email goes through one central location, be it gmail, gnus, mutt or whatever. You get to control how it's consumed, how it looks, and you get to check it when you want, how you want. You can set up notifications via sms, thread it, dump it in folders, or whatever. In other words, you control the experience, something you most likely do not with some random web forum.