Why is there even an option to vote someone a 1 if you gonna get in trouble?

I feel that. But if you just giving a 1 when in fact the average votes show otherwise, the hate votes pull down a persons rating and its a penalty overall. But you also can't block everyone you think is voting against you either. After some time, your ratings will be based on fans and buddies and not be balanced. It's alot to be considered with these platforms and trying to get fair results. Not perfect but fair.

I get what you're saying, and it makes sense, however the issue is simple actually: if giving a 1 gets flagged as a hate vote, then the rating scale is broken essentially. If a track is mastered so hot that the limiter swallows the drums whole, that’s a 1 on technical execution alone.
When you ban the low end of the scale, 4 becomes the new 1, and the entire system suffers from grade inflation. If you want self-policing without mod babysitting, tie blocking to battle eligibility: if you block someone, you can't enter battles or tournaments against them. If people abuse blocks to dodge competition or filter out critical judges, they shrink their own bracket until they lock themselves out. Self-interest solves the problem without staff having to audit vote histories. That's my 2 cents. Something to consider.

We don’t discourage giving low scores if that is what it is. It’s just basically saying if you’re going to give less than a 3 make sure it’s that as it can be reviewed. Thats all it really is.

That sounds fair, and maybe a staff member might send a DM to ask you about your vote perhaps? As part of an investigation? Yeah, because if someone puts a 1, they should have a real good reason as to why.

Honestly although 1s are there?It's not constructive to do that even if I don't like the beat...not here to disrespect or belittle people we here to grow...lotta us been in this community since young ....gotta grow up sometime

Growing up means learning what a tournament actually is.
This isn’t an after-school youth program or an open-mic therapy circle where everyone gets a juice box and a gold star for effort. There are cash prizes, entry fees, and platform rankings at stake. When you enter a battle, you aren't paying for private tutoring or a self-esteem boost, you are putting your work on the table to be measured against the competition.
When you decide that 1s, 2s, and 3s are "disrespectful," you eliminate scoring variance entirely. You compress a 5-point scale into a binary 4-or-5 coin toss. If a track comes in with clipping converters, limiter pumping that swallows the snare, and out-of-key basslines, giving that beat a 4 to protect someone's fragile ego isn't "constructive growth." It’s grade inflation. And every time you give unearned points to a trainwreck mix, you actively rob the producer who spent ten thousand hours learning gain staging, acoustic balance, and proper arrangement.
Real respect for the craft means telling the truth. A 1 isn't personal; it’s an objective metric that a track failed on fundamental execution. If someone’s ego is too brittle to handle a low score in a cash tournament, the answer isn’t to break the scoring system, it’s to stay out of the arena until their ears catch up to their ambition.

I hear u but is everyone even qualified to give people 1s?Yea at the same time none of us is Rocwielder either...we are all producers and some more experienced than others ...you may have experience on mixing...myself maybe creativity but none of us are perfect enough to judge so harshly imo....but ey I respect your stance completely

Again, if you give a 1,2 or 3. We all should be able to look at it and say, Yes, that was trash or serious improvement was needed. But If I see results and 20 people gave 4-7 on mix and then see the person that gave a 1. I consider that may be off and personal or something like a hate vote. Doing this for years now and when I see a low score there are usually multiple low scores for same reason. So all the prompt is saying before you vote that low is if you believe its a 1,2, or 3, go ahead and give it. It may or may not come into question later. But the algorithm and database will show if you do it consistently and raise the red flag to investigate.