How does Answer compare to Discourse? When would you use one over the other?

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Hello, we are considering using Apache Answer or Discourse for our forum. Is there a feature/pro-con comparison available anywhere?

Oliver1
2 Answers

Discourse is better for creating an open platform for sharing knowledge and discussions, while Apache Answer is more suitable for building a collaborative platform that focuses on problem-solving and knowledge management. The choice should be based on the team's specific needs and usage habits.

User Perspective

  1. Discourse:

    • User-friendly interface, easy navigation and use
    • Provides rich social features such as private messaging, mentions, user trust levels, and group discussions
    • Supports various content formats including text, images, videos, polls, and calendars
    • Easy creation and management of topics and categories
    • Rich plugins for extending functionality

  2. Apache Answer:

    • Simple and clear interface, focused on presenting problems and answers
    • Supports tagging and marking, helping to organize and categorize problems
    • Encourages user participation through voting and marking solutions, improving credibility and discoverability of answers
    • Open content management permissions, allowing trusted users to update and improve content
    • Invites specific users to answer relevant questions for faster problem resolution

Maintenance Perspective

  1. Discourse:

    • Requires more administrator configuration and maintenance work, including setting permissions, topic management, and plugin management
    • Provides rich community management tools such as user trust levels and reporting systems
    • Based on a series of technologies such as Ruby, PostgreSQL, and Redis, with high server resource usage
    • Initially released in 2014, with a high level of maturity

  2. Apache Answer:

    • Relatively less management and maintenance work, with most functions and configurations preset
    • Provides flexible team management tools such as member management and content review
    • Based on Go, SQLite/MySQL/PostgreSQL, can be deployed with minimal server resource usage
    • Initially released in 2021, the community is less mature compared to Discourse
Fen435

I think discourse is a great tool when you have discussions(hence the name) that can open-ended

and answer is great for creating your own Stackexchange where users post questions and usually seek quick answers (hence the name)

rene11