Is bitcointalk being flooded with bots?
Yes. And shitposters/account farmers which might as well be bots because they contribute little to nothing here. I've suggested a few things to try combat this. All new accounts have to be manually verified by a staff member before their posts show up. Removing signatures completely from lower ranks until you've got at least one merit or achieved Member status etc. A a captcha for your first post or two.
All good ideas. Trouble with any 'get past this hurdle you're clean' captcha is that a human can sit and guide the bot until it's cleared those hurdles.
I think random captcha on all posts and possibly during a session for a considerable time would be needed to stop determined bot users...
As for shitposter/click farm style stuff, that probably requires a random human assessment of post quality somehow...