Most of the spam that appears in the gallery and forums is from recent accounts.
I've participated in other forums where new accounts go through an initial evaluation period, being moderated during the first few uploads.

My suggestion: A new account's first post or gallery upload must be approved by a moderator before being open to the public, in order to avoid spam and others.

Agreed. Reported a gambling ad pretending to be art just last night, those and the "escort" or "model" or "rent a yacht/villa/whatever" spammers are usually pretty easy to spot. Not so easy is the piece I just saw posted to the Fan Art gallery. It's a photo, accompanied by a full page of very informative text concerning the design and history of the item depicted, and is probably of interest to people who collect that sort of thing. Whose hobby is fashion. BUT ... it also reads like a very long advertisement and the "artist" happens to be the company that makes the sneakers. Not only that, it is their only post and they just joined here a few days ago. It's a well crafted post, nothing like your typical spam, but I can't help question its status as genuine fan art. You know the old saying "if it quacks like a duck" ...

Thank you for your feedback.

I just saw 2 new spam threads, full of URLs (web links), so an additional suggestion:

If keeping the automated system, at least strip down (remove) all URLs from any post before a new user gets approved by moderator

Yesterday almost all my thread update notices from Rendo were new postings from spammers, some of which were pushing the same "product" but from apparently different users. The "CBD gummy" thing that keeps going around, they seem to get a lot of mileage out of that one.