[eithed]

I understand that SE needs to make money, but I find it fascinating how voluntary content (both questions, answers and moderation) is being monetised. Should I ask for percentage of ads income when my questions / answers are viewed?

[mrweasel]

There has to be some price tag associated with running Stack Overflow, but I wonder if it's within the range of something a collective could manage.

More and more I think we need volunteer projects running the things we depend on the most. Community driving email, forums, social networks and Q&A sites like Stack Overflow. A community driven Stack Overflow could still run a job board, or have the C# section be "Sponsored by Microsoft", or run a Jetbrains ad. If you only have to pay for hosting, then you need less ad revenue.

[immibis]

Stack Overflow famously ran on a half-rack of servers, duplicated in two locations for redundancy. This stopped when they got acquired by a cloud company - they were moved into the cloud. But it's clearly both possible and not too expensive.

I see prices around me for $500-ish/month for half-rack colo. Of course you have to bring your own servers if using this option.