A thought on "pending comments". Use this mechanism as a way to community-moderate [dead] posts. This may reduce or eliminate the need for a permanent hellban on individuals. For instance, someone who posted something that got them banned a year back, but has consistently posted good quality posts since, could have their posts un-deaded by individuals with sufficiently high karma, bringing them back into the conversation. If a sufficient number of their posts are resuscitated, then remove the auto-dead from their future posts (or queue them for review by moderators).