The ability to allow anonymous users to view with an option to post after logging in would be amazing! Some thought would need to occur with pricing. Does an anonymous user who signs in to post count as a user that I will be charged? Might not be the greatest feature if that is the case. Hopefully this Jira sees the light of day soon.

I like Confluence and Service desk, but strange policy for Q&A make me use some free Q&A systems like Biostars or Mamute. I consider this decision wrong both for me and Atlassian, as I need to find an alternative instead of use built-in functionality. Q&A should be licensed somehow different, because any strangers should have a possibility to make a question and it is wrong to calculate them as "users".

one other issue which is kind of related is the service desk, when people get to the services desk as Customers i.e. not a licensed user they can log in and start raising a ticket. As we know Service Desk looks into Confluence as pulls out KB articles it thinks are relative. But if the customer to be able to see that answer needs to be a Confluence User then the Service Desk Customer isn't a licensed user ideas kind of falls down. Of course if I make my Confluence KB space open to all then its fine but as you can immagine the information written in those KB articles although not secrets they do show the inner workings of a company and that probably not something most people are happy doing. If any has a solution to this I'd be happy to hear it.

Put me in with the rest. I won't be licensing CQ until this is added.

We can only use Questions if there would be a group that will not need a license to ask a question.
We are providing a plugin for JIRA and are using the Service Desk, the Service Desk users would be the best group with the right to ask questions for me.
I cannot explain my customers why they have to have several accounts in my system just to ask a question.

Since I want to have plenty customers but only limited internal users I wont license Questions for for now because it just wont fulfill our needs.

Any updates on this topic?

Because this capacity is not available (we use Confluence on our own server behind our firewall) we have elected to not continue with a license. Main reason being that most people using Confluence are anonymous (while we fire the 'sharing knowledge' engines up).

Definitely would like some update from Atlassian on this topic.

Can you please provide the current status of this issue. This would be a fantastic addition, and would definitely support the possibility of using questions.

I would like to see at least Anonymous Users be able to ask questions and those who have access to confluence can answer the questions. In our case we have 90% of our users access and request tasks via the Service Desk but want the ability to have anonymous user to ask questions such as how to access portal and view responses. Answers would come from the groups who own the projects in JIRA who also have access to Confluence. maybe the ability to tie Confluence Questions similar to KB articles as in doing with JIRA projects in Service Desk.

Atlassian, would you please confirm the status of this feature? Is it definitely coming?

This significantly impacts on choices for Answers as a support platform.

Thanks!

Hi, +1 for our institution this is a great idea and would allow me to properly use CQ. In the same way Jira Service Desk has users that are unlimited. As it is now its a prohibitive cost for us.

Wouldn't be ideal for environments who have a large number of read only anonymous unlicensed users. I'd hate to have to purchase licenses just so users could ask questions.

@Francis Jones, great idea!

+1. A vital feature IMO

"It would probably be better to add a checkbox e.g. "Hide my username", or "Ask Question Anonymously", instead of just allowing the anonymous user to ask questions. The reason for this is because on internal Confluence instances users are usually already logged in while browsing Confluence and it would be a hassle to log out to ask as an anonymous user.
This would be an awesome feature for new employees and in general if a user feels that they would like to stay hidden."

This feature blocks us from migrading out OTRS SD, Get Satisfation user community, and in-house Wiki + PMS to the whole line of Atlassian products (JIRA + JIRA SD + Confluence + Questions). The overall solution price increases 4 times having in mind we need a Questions license and a useless Confluence license for each of out existing and even potential customer posting in the community. We've came to a positive decision regarding purchase but after discovering this issue we have to seek for other options..

Would really like to see this become a feature. I would like customers to be able to log in to my public facing confluence and be able to ask questions about how to use the product.

All of the above IMO. Anon asking, as well as obfuscation options for users asking questions.

+1 vote from me.

It would probably be better to add a checkbox e.g. "Hide my username", or "Ask Question Anonymously", instead of just allowing the anonymous user to ask questions. The reason for this is because on internal Confluence instances users are usually already logged in while browsing Confluence and it would be a hassle to log out to ask as an anonymous user.

This would be an awesome feature for new employees and in general if a user feels that they would like to stay hidden.

Yeah, agreed. It should definitely be optional.

You wouldn't have to enable it. But for those of us that have Confluence only on our internal LAN, it would help people get past their discomfort of publicly showing what they don't know. (And since we very much want the questions asked, we are willing to eliminate that obstacle.)

I would be really afraid of having this in our public site because of all the spam that would surely happen.