Every morning around this time, I end up reporting one or two people for spam. I'm wondering if it's the same person making different accounts. Is it possible to ban people by their IP addresses? I think that could curb a lot of it and should be considered. Also, maybe restricting posting privileges until the account is a day old would prevent these "drive-by" posters.
I used to help run a forum (much, much busier than this - 10k plus members and over 300 posts a day - 3 years was enough before burnout with it) and there are usually plugins that can help as well. The downside to your suggestion, Tux, is that you make it harder for new visitors and members to start contributing. It's a good suggestion, it's just something that has to be balanced out. Another option, depending on back end settings, would be for a specific porn reporting flag. It would put such messages in approval mode, meaning it would not be visible to members, and a staffer would have to review it before eliminating it. That keeps the porn flag from being used by people to remove normal posts they disagree with. (I didn't lose my zeal for adminning boards, just for dealing with a huge monster. It was fun, but EXHAUSTING.)
Everyone, thank you for making those reports. Please continue making them! Spammers these days are highly sophisticated and never use the same IP. We ban every single spam IP that comes through. They also use highly randomized email addresses and never the same one. We ban every spam email that comes through. We also use anti-spam measures and 3rd party services which filter out a lot of spam accounts you guys don't see. We've been successfully filtering a lot of spam posts out but in recent months there has been an even greater uptick, so please accept our apologies as we continue to make strides towards cleaning them out. The downside for making new registrants incur temporary penalties is that just as @Magistos has said: newcoming members who may register on the spur of the moment to engage in a conversation would not be able to. The other suggestions @Magistos reports are quite valuable, and we will look into adding plugins and further solutions. That being said, now we've reached a size where we would certainly like to ask anyone who won't mind being a moderator to send me or @Phoenix a message. Thanks!