Yeah, a whole bunch of people signed up in the fall of 2004, after Rathergate got us publicity. Many of these are disruptive.
I've long believed that many banned ex-posters returned in that so-called "Class of '04" you're referring to while a flurry of activity was going on. I've encountered probably half a dozen or more "new" posters who joined around the time of Rathergate who posted messages to me as if they knew me from past threads, even though I'd never seen them before and they joined a few days or weeks earlier. One of them from early 2005, I soon found out, was some joker I had reported sometime in the previous year for posting neo-nazi material on several "Smokey Backroom" threads. He was promptly dealt with as he should've been, but many disrupters from the Class of '04 are not and it has drastically changed the posting composition of this forum from what it used to be from '99-'03.
Just give it time. Step back and take a break vs. walking out the door. The disruptive ones will lose interest and fade away. Us on the other hand will still be here.