Yeah, spam posts often pick on old threads (that may be just chance though) and "bump" them back up the indexes. Replying to them kind of "feeds the spammer", especially if someone quotes the spam post, and leaves us with a bit more of a clean-up job to do. And the discussion of the spam is always going to be off-topic, although some of the spammers have been getting quite cute recently and have been using bits of text copied from real posts to make them seem legitimate and on-topic. I've even seen spammers post on-topic replies to a preceding spam post.

The current round of spam is not especially worse than usual, just a bit more of it caught the attention of users.

One of the problems we have here is that the forum software is quite old and not especially good at stopping bots from registering, although they don't usually manage to post. Cyan want to keep an "open" registration policy, so it's easy for people to join, and are prepared to put up with some bogus registrations to maintain that.

But spam doesn't always come from spambots and I learned a while back while trying to come up with an effective anti-spam strategy for my own forums that some companies in Asia, etc., will pay people a pittance to make spam posts, blog replies, and so on - we're talking $1 per 100 posts that are verified as surviving more than 24 hours. These companies then bid for the right to spam you - here's an example I found in less than a minute: Attention Expert Internet Marketers.

If you see a spam post here then:
Do report it - use the (Report Post) button on the spam post to let us know about it. Write anything you think is relevant in the comments box, but just "Spam" will do. A moderator will then remove the post as soon as possible. We'll also get the account flagged for suspension and, if appropriate, the IP address banned.
Do not reply to the spam post - Replying on-topic to the thread is OK, but just try to ignore the spam. That way, once we remove the spam post the thread will be intact and with no continuity break.

...I think that we can all agree that folks who use 'loose' when they mean 'lose' should be punished....

'Tsokay - some of us would abuse the privilege anyway.... (You put the 'e' before the 'i'! Banned! Aha! it's 'rogue' you twit! Not 'rouge'! Banned! Mwuhahaha!)

The Auld Grump, though I think that we can all agree that folks who use 'loose' when they mean 'lose' should be punished....