The benefits of creating quality topics is very simple;
1. You'll gain more knowledge.
This is the most important things happen to me. Maybe i was far away from HQ poster in this forum. But, when I trying to create a topic, I also learn something that i don't know before or just hear a little bit information about topic idea. Because I want to share with other member, so i must doing a research. There are the reason when we are trying to share anything with member, we will gain more knowledge as you say. Same as you, I'm starting to contribute in my local board where language not a problem to communicate each other.