*cough*

Well, i believe a trial is a good idea. BUT, "and its a big but" ( No Pun Intended) it would nearly be the same as guest, a staff member when then have to promote the player to full member as usual, which would practically be the same thing as being a guest in the first place.

I was considering a probation period where they have full function, but any breaking of the rules leads to an automatic 1 month ban

That's a pretty fallacy free idea, EXCEPT one con to it

New players often don't know/read the rules very well, which could lead to some accidents on their behalf. So I'm sure regulations on that could be changed accordingly.

As well a plugin could be EASILY made for such a thing, where in a week they would be promoted.

Even with my newly acquired, rough, and not very thorough understanding of java. I could write such a easy plugin, which without a doubt the Admin/Dev team could blow away within the matter of 30 minutes, or less.

If I'm not mistaken, pex already has that function, and if not, it could be added easily with SVS, there's no need to have one custom written. I agree with iron, fett, and tprez, doing away with the greylisting would do alot of good. Although it does weed out most of the bad players, it also wards away alot of "good" players who just want to play. A guest rank would be the way to go in my personal opinion.