We just shipped a new question type that we're really excited about: fill-in-the-blank majority votes.
Instead of picking from a list of options, you type your answer freely. At the end of the day, we count all the responses. The most popular answer becomes the "correct" one, and everyone who typed it gets a bonus point.
To keep things fair, we normalize all answers before counting. We trim whitespace from the beginning and end, and convert everything to lowercase. So "Python", "python", and " python " all count as the same answer.
However, we don't correct spelling or merge synonyms. "JavaScript" and "JS" would count as different answers. Keep your responses simple and spell them correctly.
Standard majority vote questions with fixed options are fun, but they limit creativity. When everyone sees the same four choices, the answers cluster predictably. With open-ended input, the results are genuinely surprising. You get to see what the community actually thinks, not just which of four boxes they clicked.
Think simple. The most common answer is almost always the most straightforward one. If the question is "Name a programming language," the crowd will say "python" or "javascript" — not "haskell." Match the crowd's energy.