So, in the middle of a web search for other things, I found some interesting things about StackOverflow. First of all, StackOverflow has a “meta” website where there are questions and answers about the StackOverflow service itself. Second, StackOverflow once tried to roll out a “StackOverflow Documentation” system, in an effort to improve the state of documentation available, but in the end they had to sunset it. Why? The main reasons were that one of the motivations for developing the system was that it would help bring in more revenue to StackOverflow, when more people would use it because of the greater service offerings. It didn’t. As it turns out, documentation is a tough place to make improvements in, and although there are improvements to be made, the fact is, with documentation, there is already a lot of good or at least passible stuff out there already. What really got StackOverflow started was the fact that before StackOverflow, there was basically nothing else out there on the Internet, at least nothing that was publicly available, so StackOverflow was really a “killer app” in its category.
Also, I found this other interesting and related article about how StackOverflow makes money. Basically, they concentrate on StackOverflow careers as their way to make money through advertising. From a community and logical standpoint, the concept is very legitimate.
20190531/https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/354217/sunsetting-documentation
20190531/https://stackoverflow.blog/2016/11/15/how-we-make-money-at-stack-overflow-2016-edition