People want to form discourse communities because they want to be surrounded/interact with people that have a similar interest. It allows people to share what they are passionate about and maybe learn a thing or two from other people about a topic. In the case of my “discourse artifact”, which is a website where groups can find/make competitive video game matches in a variety of games. It acts as a nice hub to find games with clearly defined rules for the match that both teams have to abide by and a system in place to objectively handle any disputes that may come up.

People can gain many things when joining a discourse community. They can become more knowledgeable in a topic of interest, they might make new friends, and many more reasons that are more personal to the individual. The writings used by discourse communities can police its membership. They might have specific rules that the members have to abide by, a way to prevent misinformation from spreading in the group, or the access to be in the discourse community in general.

I think the key aspect separating a discourse community from a speech community is the free choice of membership. I think that being able to chose what discourse community you want to be apart of, the freedom of choice to surround or be apart of a group that has a similar interest that you have regardless of what language people speak is what separates it from a speech community.