My requirements for Newbies are really low: if I think it's a real user and not a spammer, I'll Merit him/her. I strongly believe that's what Bitcointalk (and Bitcoin) needs to grow long-term.
I agree with the second part of what you wrote, but I can't bring myself to lower my standards that much when it comes to low-ranked members. While not all of them are spammers, I do think that the vast majority of their posts are of very low quality and are made primarily for bounties or signature campaigns, which has been the case for years now.
I don't consider Newbies who spam bounties or signature campaigns "real users", they're very likely just one of many alt-accounts, and even if they are unique people, I don't think they're here for the right reasons.
As an example:
I've merited this Newbie's third post:
I have a dilemma! I remember buying Bitcoin at its infancy 2009/2010 however remember deleting the wallet and all related programs as the PC was running so slow and was crashing!!
got a new PC then and left the old (now none bootable) one untouched till recently when I downloaded some Deleted file recovery software to try to find the wallet or any sign of it!!
I am very primitive when it comes to computers do not know coding, Python or any other PC language just a simple Windows operator!
Any bitcoin/blockchain specific identifying file, cookies, programs, scripts.... names to plug in to the recovery software search that would hint to existence of bitcoin/ wallet or blockchain on the old hard drives?
any Windows software that I can download/ buy to find/ recover them?
What do you recommend to see if it's worth going to the next step of professional recovery??
But not this Newbie's first post:
The first example is someone who I don't expect to start spamming this forum, for the second example I have no hopes left

The first one is much harder to find though.