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?
Seems like a pretty easy tradeoff -- don't allow posts for brand new users, but do allow comments. Maybe with a daily limit or something that gets larger based on not getting downvoted into oblivion.
Then do the same thing for posts; after a month of not being an idiot in comments, give someone a chance to not be an idiot in posts as well. And make the flag easily reset-able if someone chooses to be an idiot.
Blanket comment deletions are stupid.