As an aforementioned user, I can assure you that altcoinstalks is a spamfest. Having "Coin Voting", "Bounties & Rewards" and "Aidrops & Giveaways" as the very first sub-boards visitors will immediately see, says it all.
If you pay a little or more attention to the forum, you would have seen that there is a massive reshuffling going on right now, with open discussions on boards and sub-boards to be deleted.Things may be slower since the administrator does not sit behind the monitor and make choices; instead, he allows members to decide what is best for the forum. The ALT forum is more democratic, which is something we lack here.
There is no such thing as a spam-free forum; if you're waiting for the forum to be spam-free, you will wait forever.
Let me say I agree with you about the spam of a thing, once it is a public forum and media where anyone can just open an account and have access to it without prior screening to ascertain their adequacy and inefficiency, no one can prevent the spamming and other things that come with it. The place can only be moderated as we are seeing here and other places.
But for the democratic remarks, unless your words are not coherent with the word, I do not think you are right. Being slow to take action but allowing the forum users to make the decision in most cases looks more democratic to me. Since the alternative forum still wants more traffic, I am sure that they will be more open to advice and suggestions and be fast to implement it, but that is not what we use "democratic" for. They just want your idea (for now), a desperate way to move the forum forward and be like the competitor. But that doesn't mean they are more democratic, and with time when they are strong enough, you will see changes. I think Bitcointalk has never faked it, it has given the users a high level of freedom which can't be shortchanged for anything.