Live Polls in Comments

To create a poll, click the poll button in the comment editor toolbar. A poll editor opens below the text input, where you can set:

• The question, up to 200 characters.
• The options, between 2 and 10, each up to 100 characters. Use Add option to add more.
• When the poll closes: no end date, 1 day, 3 days, or 1 week. A closed poll shows its final results and no longer accepts votes.
• Privacy: whether voters stay anonymous, are visible to admins, or are public. See Voter Privacy.
• Require Vote to See Results: when checked, the results stay hidden from each viewer until they vote or the poll closes.

Write your comment as usual and post it. The poll is posted with the comment. Polls can be added to new comments and to replies.

To discard a poll before posting, click Remove poll.

To vote, click an option. The results are shown right away, and the poll shows how many responses it has so far.

Each person gets one vote per poll. While the poll is open, a voter can click Change vote to pick a different option.

Results update live. When anyone on the page votes, the counts and bars update for everyone viewing the poll, without a page refresh.

Unless the poll requires a vote to see the results, viewers can click Show results to see the current counts before voting.

Every poll has a privacy setting, chosen by its author when creating it. The poll shows its setting under the options, so voters know who can see their vote before they cast it.

• Anonymous (the default): only the totals are shown. Nobody, including admins, can see who voted for what.
• Admins can see who voted: only admins and moderators can open See who voted, which lists each voter and their choice.
• Public: any viewer can click See who voted and see who voted for what.

Votes from visitors who are not logged in are counted but have no name attached, so they do not appear in the voter list.

The author of a poll is notified as responses come in:

• In-app: a notification under the bell icon when the poll gets a new response. When many people vote, these are grouped into one notification.
• Email: a daily email to the poll's author when their poll got new responses that day.

Only a person's first vote counts as a new response. Changing a vote does not send a notification, and authors are not notified about their own votes.

Notifications respect the poll's privacy. For anonymous polls they only say how many new responses came in. Voter names are included for public polls, and for admin-visible polls when the author is an admin or moderator.

The email includes a link to stop notifications for that poll. Its content can be changed with the Poll Response Notification template, see Email Templates.

Polls can also be managed from your own code with the REST API, for example to add a poll to a comment from your backend, close a poll, or export the votes:

• Poll Structure describes the poll object and its limits.
• GET, PUT, PATCH, and DELETE /api/v1/polls/:commentId read, replace, edit, and remove the poll on a comment.
• PollVote Structure describes a single vote.
• GET, POST, and DELETE /api/v1/poll-votes list, cast, and remove votes.

A poll can also be created along with its comment by passing poll to POST /api/v1/comments.

The API follows the same settings as the widget: polls must be enabled, and votes without a logged in user are rejected unless anonymous poll votes are allowed. Individual votes on anonymous polls cannot be read through the API.