We have this place for many of our internal communities. It turns out that it is a positive for engagement as it allows discussion on topics that don't relate to the structure. We had trialed this for our external community as well and it was used sparingly. I think the issue there was that different partners didn't feel comfortable sharing off topic items based on their company reputation. It wasn't an issue to have it available but it just wasn't used that often. I personally don't see a negative with having it in either space, unless you get topics that are inappropriate in any way.
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