Do not engage in content manipulation such as posting spam content, vote manipulation through using several user accounts or consistently down-voting a user. Vote for the content, not for the person.

Whoa there. I don't do any of that, and I think my account history and behavior speak for themselves, but in any given single thread, when trolls be trollin' they rarely limit themselves to just one comment because the point is to ignore and provoke, NOT to converse or exchange ideas.

So a little clarification would be helpful. If you are speaking about following a user from thread to thread via their post history and downvoting them whenever they post anything at all, in any discussion about anything -- "downvote stalking" -- then sure, I see your point and it's well taken.

But if you're saying I can only downvote the first asinine volley of provocative stupidity from a given user in one specific thread, and must not downvote any of the successive proofs of idiocy and/or bad faith they offer in that same thread to support the first, I just don't know if I can keep my itchy trigger finger holstered.

As an aside, one of the cool things about the Fediverse is that many users can see who downvoted them; I think that's more of a real deterrent against weaponizing downvotes than any other policy or action. If you were to turn that on for lemmy.world as well I think it would get you better voting behavior from users all around.