[cperciva]

However, there seems to be a shortage of moderators. I've flagged dozens of obvious spams and they're usually still around an hour or more later.

[noonespecial]

I think it works pretty well. They show up in "new" from time to time, I try to flag them when I see them and they disappear, never making it near the front page.

An hour or 2 seems an ok time for deletion right now because very few of those article are showing up each day. If the volume expands greatly, I'm sure they can work out a way that X number of flags will auto-delete.

[SwellJoe]

However, there seems to be a shortage of moderators.

The number of moderators has recently been increased.

[rms]

I think they're auto-killed at a certain number of flags, even without moderator intervention.