Yeah. My idea isn't great, just a frustrated response to this person who claims to have been here for a long time yet still feels it's appropriate to make offensive posts about others here.
I like the idea of an incubation period, but I've seen valuable comments posted from new accounts- I bet a ton of people lurk for months before seeing a thread they feel they can make a valuable contribution to.
You may allow them to contribute - just make them work a little for it. Trolls are lazy - they won't go through a captcha just to harass other people - they'll go to Digg instead. And those who use throwaway logins to troll are also cowards, who don't want to be exposed as who they really are. We can work with that too.
I like the idea of an incubation period, but I've seen valuable comments posted from new accounts- I bet a ton of people lurk for months before seeing a thread they feel they can make a valuable contribution to.