However, if I google for a more specific issue such as Java lambda foreach index, guess what's the first link I get? This Stack Overflow page [2] Actually, the first six links are SO pages.

So, it is possible that they busted Documentation because of bad SEO for generic plain vanilla searches.

[1] https://stackoverflow.com/documentation/java/91/lambda-expre...

[2] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/22793006/java-8-foreach-...

I probably ended up on SO hundreds of times in that period, and never once saw Documentation mentioned (I _may_ have technically seen it in the nav bar, but just seeing "Documentation" in that context I'm going to assume it is documentation _for_ SO and just ignore it).

E: Forgot to mention, even reading the title of this post my initial thought was that it was documentation relating to the sunsetting of SO (which sounded crazy).

And I thought it was Stack Overflow sunsetting the very idea of tech documentation because now everybody just read the SO thread for everything they want to do, which is even craziest.

Few announcements through regular comment notifications would be fine to me even if not interested.

Look again. There is DocumentationBETA in the top bar, it has been there since they started the project.

Anyway, who looks at the navbar? People get there by googling a problem they are having now. They're in hurry, no time to look around.

That isn't the top Google result for 'Stack Overflow Documentation'. It's not even on the first page. https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=stack+overflow+documentati...

My search results were what I'd expect:

http://i.imgur.com/o9gPJ4c.png

https://stackoverflow.com/tour/documentation

https://stackoverflow.com/documentation/documentation/topics

https://stackoverflow.com/documentation/python/topics

None of these are https://stackoverflow.com/documentation .

The Documentation page for this in comparison is helpful and gives a good overview (with more and more detailed topics as you scroll down): https://stackoverflow.com/documentation/php/2784/php-mysqli

But again if it doesn't show up in search results it doesn't matter. That also means there's less of an incentive to improve the content since nobody will read it.

I don't know how they're able to hold their place still, I really don't.

It doesn't really teach you anything in depth, opting instead to just spit out a bunch of examples.

As someone who used it initially years back starting out, I would have appreciated if it actually gave me context about how things worked and why rather than just copying and pasting code.

The only real reason it seems to get attention is due to the feedback loop of its ranking. Users see it as a top result and assume it must be some sort of authority on web development.

It has nothing to do with the W3C despite the name. Not to imply that beginners might know about W3C in the first place but still!

I wonder if it's still the same team of 3 developers running the place? Here's a writeup about it http://w3schools.sinsixx.com/about/about_refsnes.asp.htm

You spelt the very reason it is (was?) popular. The documentation/tutorial that gets traffic isn't the one with the most in-depth technical treatment, but, one which gives accessible examples to get started.

https://www.w3schools.com/JSREF/jsref_slice_array.asp

The very first thing is an example. The contrast of the fonts is easy on the eyes. You'll be definitely writing code using this method within minutes.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Web/JavaScript/Referen...

The very first thing you see is a huge green box "Why does MDN look different?", which is completely irrelevant to what I'm looking for. Scrolling down reveals thin gray on gray fonts which make the page hard to read. The amount of information is excessive if you're in a hurry.

SO Documentation had low Google results because nobody used it, didn't have that many good examples, so people rarely linked it and so it had low pagerank.