Maybe I don't understand your question, but there's a huge network effect of people browsing the site and answering questions. Anybody can put up a Q&A site, b

Maybe I don't understand your question, but there's a huge network effect of people browsing the site and answering questions. Anybody can put up a Q&A site, but to gain traction the site needs answers. It does raise the question of what happens when StackExchange shuts down. There's a lot of knowledge stored there, hopefully it's not lost.