I was on a blog years ago that had a lot of sniping happen, and HUGE epic flame wars were a weekly, if not daily occurance. People would create an account to flame someone, and some people would create tens to hundreds of accounts in a day just to flame people and push their agenda. They instituted a week long 'timeout' after an account was created to stop that, and it did. Also new accounts couldn't reply to certain forums until they had reached a certain number of posts. It's a PITA, but it solved their problems and made the board so much more focused and 'sane'. There have been some threads here that have become heated, making the chances for flame wars and attacks rise. Not that the restrictions on new members stops existing members from flaming recklessly.
But, it's their site, their rules. *shrug*