Correct me if I am wrong, but could the flow of spam not have been quelled by putting a recaptcha or similar verification device on the review form that I do so miss from the previous layout?
I would have liked to keep the old format, but the very old frontpage forum software kept breaking down. I did my best to find a solution but none was to be found. So we had to move to this ugly look. In ten years time it will look interesting.