From the point of view of the core team, Arduno is their baby, the built it up, and it's very hard to let go of control.
Okay, so I guess I had hoped that isn't the reason.
I know what it's like to transition a project to grow it and I know it's not easy. But I'm kinda concerned if we can't even move to enabling spam deletion. The forums are part of the community and IMHO we have all built that.
I'd say just be patient right now, they are dealing with the spam.
From my point of view it's not the first time the issue been raised and I don't think the spam is being dealt with--there's been certain posts that have stayed around for 2-3 days without being deleted--despite being marked as SPAM.
The only real downside right now is they're spending time that could go into helping users or further developing Ardunio on deleting spam.
While that's one downside it's not the only one--it takes more time to mark something as SPAM than it does to delete it.
Should a mod only delete spam or a grossly off-topic thread? Where do you draw the line?
As far as I'm concerned I'm only interested in deleting spam. Grossly off-topic threads can already be dealt with by community nudges in the right direction.
I'm not wanting to come across as a jerk but I would like to know if we're likely to see any change in this because IMHO it's an unnecessary negative in the community.
--Phil.