Where the answers go
The Reality Bank.
The Reality Bank is the append-only record that holds every verified answer given on Democrez. Answers are added and never edited, never deleted and never overwritten. If a situation changes, it becomes a new version standing beside the old one, and the readings taken under the old wording stay exactly as they were.
Append-only, and what that costs us.
Most systems that collect responses treat their store as a working document. A figure is recalculated, a badly worded question is quietly fixed, an embarrassing early result is dropped once better data arrives. Each of those decisions is defensible on its own, and together they mean nobody outside can tell what the record originally said.
The Reality Bank cannot do any of that. An answer, once given, is appended and stays. A situation whose wording changes does not update in place; a new version begins and the old readings remain attached to the old wording. There is no edit path, and that is a deliberate constraint rather than a missing feature.
What this costs
A card that turned out to be poorly written still has its reading in the record. A result that came out lopsided, or that contradicts something we said later, is still there. We cannot tidy the corpus into a better story about the platform, and we would not be able to even if a good reason appeared — which is the point, because a good reason always appears eventually.
What is stored, and what is not
A record holds the card version, the option chosen, the prediction that was locked, and enough to confirm the answer came from a distinct verified person. It does not hold who that person was. There is no identifier in the record that leads back to an account, which is why nobody — including us — can retrieve what a particular person answered.
This is also why deletion works the way it does. You can remove your account and the verification attached to it. The answers already absorbed into aggregates cannot be pulled back out, because there is nothing marking them as yours to pull.
The Reality Bank is not your archive
These are two different things and they are easy to confuse. Your archive in the app is a private list of rounds you have played, kept for you and shown to nobody else. The Reality Bank is the anonymous corpus that every aggregate is computed from. Your archive is a convenience; the Reality Bank is the evidence. Deleting the first does not and cannot reach into the second.
Why a bank
Because the useful comparison is a ledger rather than a database. A ledger is written forward, entries are not erased, and a correction is a new entry rather than a change to an old one. Anybody reading it later can reconstruct not just the current position but how it got there — and a measurement platform that cannot show its own history is asking to be taken on faith.
Every entry came from a verified person, and none of them can be traced. Both halves of that sentence have to be true at once, and the record is built so they are.
Inside a record
What is kept,
and what never was.
The second column is not a list of things we have chosen not to show you. It is a list of things that are not written down anywhere, which is a different and stronger claim.
| Held in the record | Not held at all | |
|---|---|---|
| The situation | Card identifier and the exact version answered | — |
| The answer | Which option was chosen | Who chose it |
| The prediction | The share that was locked before the reveal | Any later change — there is no later change |
| The person | Confirmation that they were verified and distinct | Phone number, name, device, location, account link |
| The history | Every entry, in the order it arrived | A per-person history of how somebody tends to answer |
What can and cannot be deleted follows directly from this. Delete your data
When a card changes
A new version,
never an edit.
Wording gets improved. A situation turns out to read differently than intended, or an option is worded in a way that tilts the scale. The correction is real, but it cannot be applied to the past.
The old version stays open
Readings taken under the earlier wording remain attached to that wording. They are not migrated, merged, or quietly counted toward the new version.
The new version starts empty
It begins with no responses and has to cross its own threshold before any aggregate appears. Inheriting the old count would mean reporting answers to a question nobody was asked.
Both are readable
A published reading names the version it belongs to. That is one of the fields every public reading must carry before it can appear at all.
Nothing is withdrawn
Not a card that was clumsily written, not a result that was inconvenient. A record you can remove things from is not a record.
In one line
The definition.
- The Reality Bank
- The append-only, anonymous record of every verified response given on Democrez. Entries are added and never edited or deleted; a change to a situation creates a new version rather than altering the old one. No entry carries an identifier linking it to a person.
Two separations that are held apart
- Institution data never enters it. Situations written for a particular college or organisation feed that institution's own report. The two pipelines are kept apart, and a card cannot move between them.
- Guest answers never enter it. An unverified response cannot count toward a public aggregate, because the whole meaning of a threshold is that the people behind it were real and distinct.
Questions
Straight answers.
Can I delete an answer I already gave?
No, and this is a consequence of the anonymity rather than a refusal. Your answer is not stored against you, so there is no entry marked as yours to remove. You can delete your account and the verification attached to it; what is already inside an aggregate stays, because nothing identifies it as having come from you.
Can Democrez look up what I answered?
No. The record holds the card, the option, the prediction and a confirmation that the responder was verified and distinct — and nothing that leads back to an account. There is no internal view that reveals it, so this is not a permission we could grant on request.
What happens if a situation was badly worded?
The wording is corrected as a new version, which starts with no responses and has to reach its own threshold. The readings taken under the old wording remain attached to the old wording rather than being merged in or withdrawn.
Is this the same as my archive in the app?
No, and they are worth keeping apart. Your archive is a private list of rounds you have played, visible only to you. The Reality Bank is the anonymous corpus every aggregate is computed from. Removing your archive does not reach into it.
Could a bad result be quietly removed?
Not without breaking the property the whole platform rests on. There is no deletion path, and a published reading names its card version and seal date precisely so a later reader can check that the record was not rearranged.
Does institution data go into the Reality Bank?
No. Situations written for a specific institution feed that institution's report and never enter the public record. The separation is structural rather than a policy applied afterwards, and a card cannot move from one pipeline to the other.
Why not just call it a database?
Because a database implies rows that can be updated, and these cannot. A ledger is the closer comparison: written forward, never erased, and corrected by adding rather than by changing what is already there.
Add one entry to it.
One situation a day. Your answer joins the record anonymously, and stays.