[brudgers]

One possible advantage I see is it creates a 1:1 correspondence between a website and a file.

If what I care about is the website (and that's usually going to be the case), then there's a single familiar box containing all the messy details. I don't have to see all the files I want to ignore.

That might not be a benefit for you and not having used it, it is only a theoretical benefit in an unlikely future for me.

But just from the title of the post, I had a very clear piccture of the mechanism and it was not obvious why I would want to start with a different mechanism (barring ordinary issues with open source projects).

But that's me and your mileage may vary.