The party adjourned to a hot tub, yes. Fully clothed, I might add. If you recall, Stage 1 was the addition of the option for diarists not to permit unauthenticated users commenting on their diary. Stage 2 is about taking it one step further. People are still abusing the system so this step is another along the way to make life a little bit more difficult.
Diarists can now configure the policy for accepting comments on their diary.
Do not allow comments from anybody, except those users that are specified. The default is to accept comments from anybody, except those that are specified. On this screen you can change the default behaviour using one of the two options i've just detailed. You can remove members from the list and you can manually add new members to the list. What this boils down to is, if you receive a comment from an authenticated user and you don't want to receive comments from them anymore then drop them in the ban list.