Locking a spam thread isn't really an urgent report. We have to actually go through the thread and make sure it has actually served its purpose.
...
This is why I think we should be cracking down on campaigns that pay for this crap rather than playing cat and mouse and locking good threads that have just turned to drivel because of spammers that are being paid for low quality contributions.
I don't disagree, and I've voiced my support for increasing the merit requirements to display a signature and forcing bounty managers to stop paying for spam on other threads. However, I still think the community (the minority of it that aren't shitposters) should be taking in active role in trying to clean up the sub boards. I agree that deleting spam comments and locking mega threads aren't urgent or that important compared to other tasks demanding attention of Global Mods, which is why we need a dedicated board mod or two who can focus on these sorts of things.
yeah, it seems lately we've lost more staff than we've taken on, and there are big gaps of time when reports just aren't being handled quickly enough, which is problematic from time to time. for example, there was a spam newbie account that was posting thread after thread of nonsensical garbage, and even with the restriction on time between posts, they managed to fill just about the entire first page with spam threads before a patroller / moderator was able to see my reports and nuke the account.
This is the kind of thing I'm talking about. There have been a couple of times I've reported some completely worthless thread (e.g. "Is Bitcoin Good?" or similar), but by the time it is acted upon several days later the thread has already accumulated 4 or 5 pages of spammy replies.