Please stop saying darkcoin in this forum now. I don't want us to pretend to be some rival to whatever other new coins are out there. Lets keep the topic to vertcoin specifically.
Discussing similar coins is really useful for understanding Vertcoin and introducing others to it.. I don't think there's any reason not to be mentioning DRK and other coins.
I think your diagnosis of the strengths of Vertcoin is spot on, by the way. The focus on strengthening the blockchain and keeping it distributed is the correct one at the moment: anonymity is not a crucial feature right now. DRK's implementation is not ideal either.