Hello? For the nth time, some of you obviously missed it, but we already had that poll. And the majority said YES to public votes.
My idea would be to keep the the release comments but allow deletion of any unecessary spam/playground related behaviour from the comments page - if you are the creator of the entry.
the majority of 20 people (if at all) that took part in a poll is NOT the majority of all users. really. infact such a poll is about as meaningless as the voting result for an entry that got 20 votes :)
Let's not get carried away and forget that this site incorporates also the work of the uploaders & the work need to create the content thats presented here or the money donated to keep the server running. ;)
"one would still be able to say "wow great stuff" and then give a 1" there it fails :)
I think V-12's proposal is the best: "creator of entry can select if people can comment or/and vote for his release"