22 · A poll under the entry

Under the text of an entry there may be a poll: a few closed questions, each answered with one click. The instance supplies them with the entry, the engine collects the votes and shows the result.

Questions have **fixed identifiers**, shared across every language version, while the wording of the question is in the instance’s language. The same principle as with ratings and comments: a question has as many wordings as there are versions, and a vote has one place. The sum is not divided between translations.

**The result is revealed only after you answer**, and that is not decoration but the whole mechanism. The reader is meant to answer for themselves first and then see how many people answered the same way. The other order would turn the poll into a survey to read — and take away the only reason to click.

We store the question identifier, the answer and the version’s language. **Nothing that would let one person’s answers be assembled** — no reader identifier, no address. That someone has already answered is remembered by their browser. With questions touching hard experience, that is not a detail but the condition for anyone answering honestly.

The poll stands **before the rating and the comments** — from the cheapest gesture to the most expensive. A click costs nothing, a star requires a judgement, a comment requires words of your own.

What this feature does NOT do: it awards no points, gives no rewards and does not affect the rating of the entry. If an answer earned anything beyond the result, it would stop being an answer — and the only reason worth collecting it would be gone.