Forums and user generated content is extremely easy to beat. My 1 month old domain is already beat quora and a niche related forum in 3 keywords and is currently ranking in the top 10. The keywords are informational intent though and have low search volume.I know this niche where about 70% of top serps results are forums.
I want to know if I can break into the top 3 by writing blog articles instead.
One thing though - these ranking domains have very high domain authority with many backlinks
ThanksQ&A in general got a big boost because Google is scraping the answers and providing them straight on the SERPs
If you do meta markup well and tell google where to take your hard work for their benefit, you may rank well on this niche. But do expect like 70% no-click searches.