[dustingetz]

hardly any SE sites have a community worth paying for, which is kind of the whole point

[proee]

Well there's plenty of sites owners (with credit cards) that might assume otherwise. It depends on the target audience, but if it was for say doctors or lawyers 1/10th the traffic or even 1/100th the traffic of a typical programming site would be a success.

Maybe they did a survey among all the sites to come to your conclusion, but it seems odd they never tried go paid.

[loikujhygthj]

The people that could afford a site aren't the people that answer questions for free.

The main problem was that there was no way of charging the people who asked questions - who were the only ones likely to want to pay.