The comment delay thing staying on from comments from weeks ago, even after you've made a bunch of newer comments with net positive karma, doesn't seem like a desired behavior.

On something like Metafilter, things like this would be resolved by talking to the moderators and them making case-by-case adjustments, but the moderation style on LW seems to be a bit more hands-off.

Maybe this could be reported as an issue with the karma system in the LW codebase issue tracker?