A digg-style bury mechanism might be a better approach to the problem so that the community has a chance to police itself. The comment can be automagically deleted (via DB flag only – no actual deletion) after some arbitrary number of buries (let’s say 10). If the offending user continues to make comments that are consistently buried, their ability to make future comments are suspended until such time that they appeal. Admin (you guys) could then reset the numbers for this specific user. The user’s main login screen should also indicate how close they are to having their commenting privileges suspended.

This frees you guys to simply following up on appeals (with some backend resetting via the Admin ControlPanel for successful appeals). This would also reduce the amount of dead accounts by some smaller amount.

Conversely… users who consistently make positive comments (voted up) should be rewarded somehow. Some ideas here but don’t want to make this post too long.

I’m sure all of this has been tabled and discussed already as possible future implementations just wanted to post these thoughts anyway.

Keep up the great work Hulu!