How about limiting the number of accounts that are created every day or lets say each hour?
I am not sure if anyone has this data but there must be numerous accounts that are being created ever day. Out of these accounts only countable once could be from genuine or brand new user whose visiting the forum for first time. Some of them could be come back users with lost/hacked accounts.
. . . and most of them might be with the intentions of spamming.
Limiting account creation will slow down the burst spamming and might give more time to moderators and other users to fight against spam.
It won't stop the spamming but it will slow down the process.
This is only going to penalise genuine users whilst giving advantage to bots who can automate the process. Theymos is never going to do anything that is this restrictive so we need ways that only effect the bots. I think we should look at ways at stopping all these bots though as there's masses of them right now and it's only going to get worse. Shadowbanning would at least stop the spam from being an eyesore to everyone and genuine users won't know any different.
We can't request this action from theymos because he wants traffic on this forum and such members generate huge traffic of bitcointalk. High traffic means higher cost of ads on the website, i.e. high revenue for theymos. Forum runs on servers and has costs, moderators need money too (I remember hilariousandco said that they are paid according to their work).
The forum sits on ~1250 Bitcoin and theymos already said it doesn't need money, and he doesn't personally need to profit of it either (I'm too lazy to find back the posts). I don't think high traffic is a priority. Instead, the forum's mission is to be "as free as possible".
Maybe theymos wants to use forum funds for other good things?
Check this!I doubt forum funds will be used for things like that, but I'm sure you could get people to contribute to it. Things like seasteads are easier said than done though and usually will end in tears... or deaths.