ASF Project Spotlight: Apache Answer 

Posted by The ASF Projects

Can you tell us a bit about the project?  
Apache Answer is a free, Q&A platform software for teams to build a knowledge base, online forum, help center, etc. In 2022, the project was launched by the SegmentFault team, inspired by their experience building China’s largest developer Q&A community, and the growing need of dedicated online Q&A space for teams and companies.

By leveraging SegmentFault’s years of experience in community-building and engagement, Answer aims to help more teams build an informative and respectful online community and unleash the power of knowledge sharing.

What technology problem are you using?
In Answer, everything is efficient. Team members can capture and share their expertise through Q&A, which builds a centralized knowledge hub gradually. Admins can organize and manage a knowledge base, making it accessible to all team members.

Team members are a vital part of this knowledge hub. They go beyond asking questions- sharing an answer to help others or coming up with a better solution. It breaks down information-sharing silos and enables an open sharing culture that boosts productivity. 

Why is this work important?
Answer provides an efficiency boost for teams by building a centralized knowledge sharing platform for streamlined workflow and productivity enhancement. This way, everyone in a team can spend less time searching. Answer also helps improve knowledge retention for teams. Writing and updating documentation is time-consuming and becomes outdated easily. Answer can help teams preserve knowledge gained and information shared by ensuring it is updated regularly. Last but not least, security is the top priority. With Answer, you have complete ownership and control of your data. Users can protect data from unauthorized access with a private Answer deployment. 

The ASF’s mission is to provide software for the public good. In what was does your project embody the ASF mission and way?
Open knowledge sharing is the heart of Answer. Answer makes it accessible to teams at any scale to build and own their Q&A community that is safe, respectful and collaborative. As an open-source project, we are community-centric. Everyday we work with developers worldwide to solve problems and craft new features that help make the future of Answer better for everyone. 

Are there any use cases you would like to tell us about?
SelectDB is also using Apache Answer to build a technical forum for their users to exchange ideas. A developer used it to build an online forum for Golang enthusiasts. 

What makes Answer special is that we use Answer to build our own official forum. It is a place considered as a support center, online forum, and knowledge base shaped by everyone.

How can others contribute to this project?
Anyone can contribute to Apache Answer – not just coding – as every contribution counts, no matter big or small. There are many ways to get involved: 

  • Use Answer and Help Make it Better: Create an issue to report a bug or suggest an improvement. 
  • Translate Answer in Your Languages: Help translate Answer to other languages on Crowdin.
  • Share Your Story with Answer: Promote Answer on social media platforms, write a blog of your story of Answer, or contribute a tutorial to help people make the best use of Answer.
  • Develop Plugins: Add wings to Answer with the plugins or develop one that users are expecting. Explore existing plugins here.
  • Help with Version Release: Help test new candidate releases and vote on dev@answer.apache.org. Find out more in Contributing doc. 

For more Apache Answer resources or to connect: 

The ASF is home to nearly 9,000 committers contributing to more than 320 active projects. With the support of volunteers, developers, stewards, and more than 75 sponsors, ASF projects create open source software that is used ubiquitously around the world. This work helps us realize our mission of providing software for the public good.

This blog series aims to shine a spotlight on the projects that help make the ASF community vibrant, diverse, and long lasting. We want to share stories, use cases, and resources among the ASF community and beyond so that the hard work of ASF communities and their contributors is not overlooked. 

If you are part of an ASF project and would like to be showcased, please reach out to markpub@aparche.org. 

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