Regarding the spam, it's basically a technology problem.

The UBB code used for these forums renders profile pages (with our e-mail addresses) as standard HTML pages - easily retrieved via a variety of automated spam engines. Unlike many other sites where I feel free entering a phony e-mail address, I actually want other FT'er to be able to contact me.

Long term, we'd have to hope for a fix from InfoPop which will make it more difficult to harvest e-mail addresses.