I need help making a SE ebook

Question

I plan to start this project in a month, if anyone would like to help then please message me

I am making a ebook all about Stack Exchange. I was wondering if you could give me ideas on what I should have in it and any questions preferably on any meta site about the networks.

Answer 1

Hi Benny,

This is probably more of a question about what would make a good book rather than a question about this site. However you should aim to include some of the following:

• Something about the history (I suggest you have a look at some of the posts on Jeff's blog)
• The current community and a look at some of the more popular posters
• Hilarious anecdotes taken from answers/comments/chat (I suggest you scour the meta site for those)
• Memorable events (the great rep recalc, unicornify, many memes of meta)
• The future and area 51
• Pepper it (or salt it) with a photo of Jeff and Joel and their own thoughts on how it all went and where it's going

To add some drama you could contact some of the people who have been asked politely to refrain from using the site to add their 2 cents on what went wrong and their future plans.

Put it all together and you should have something worth selling. Good luck!

Answer 2

Have you seen this meta post List of all badges with full descriptions

Answer 3

• How to use it
• What their competitors are http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/03/whos-your-arch-enemy.html
• Why it's popular
• About the site (as seen by its end-users), and about the business (as seen by its owners/developers): how it started, and how it grew
• What it was before it started http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/

I've never made an ebook but if it's like making software you could also consider:

• Getting some beta testers http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz.5.833574.3
• Asking them for feedback on what more information they would like (i.e. please your customers ... don't take my advice because I'm most likely not one of your customers)

Answer 4

Did you see Which tools and technologies build the Stack Exchange Network?, Stack Overflow’s New York Data Center and FAQ for Stack Exchange sites? And did you click all links in the footer?

If you're into the technical background, then there are more recent posts on blog.serverfault.com too. Like Stack Exchange’s Architecture in Bullet Points and Our Storage Decision.

Answer 5

I started one myself on WikiBooks a while ago:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/The_StackExchange_User_Guide

Maybe we could kind of work together on that?