It's been a long time now of watching instantly deleted handshake comments and going to the mod logs and seeing dozens or hundreds of what look like mostly reasonable comments auto-deleted in the week(s) since Dom was last active.
I know things were set up extra draconian to deter a certain child bride and gore themed obsessive trolling campaign, but I haven't seen them caught in the net in a long time. All I'm seeing are tens of fresh users getting sandbagged for weeks and never coming back.
It might be time to try loosening the muzzle a bit?
I get it, and 100% true. But it's a gate so you can still occasionally let the good ones in, otherwise you're just walled off. Which isn't always a bad thing either, if the freak tide is too high, sealing off is better than being flooded.
Just keeping an eye on the balance