I wonder whether it’s time to consider moderator approval for each new account’s first post. It seems like we’ve had a recent uptick in noise posts: spam, trolls, and also earnest but confused new community members posting a request for Swift usage help to the Evolution topic. (I do have a soft spot for the last one, but would still prefer not to get email notifications about them.)
Forum moderators, what do you think?
I feel like I end up reviewing a lot of first posts, and then somehow these blatantly offensive posts just go through automatically. It's mystifying.
There's definitely been an uptick in spam over the last month or two. Hopefully we can keep most people from seeing it.
I certainly do not envy anyone the task of moderating a public forum. 
I will investigate whether there's any other useful forum settings that might help cut down on that.