The problem
There is no “skin in the game” for spammers. The cost of submitting a spam application is very low, and as we all saw, this can cause a LOT of work for reviewers.
What is needed
Some way to penalize scam applicants, while providing minimal friction to legitimate applicants.
A Solution
All projects should be required to submit a small stake of 5 OP. If their project is removed for breaking the rules, this stake is not returned. All projects not removed for rule breaking get their stake returned.
There was some suggestions that projects should be able to be “sponsored” in order to reduce the cost to 0 for legitimate projects. I think this isn’t a bad idea, but does not need to be done formally at the risk of over-complicating the system. Hopefully badgeholders & others in the OP Collective would be able to informally help projects who had trouble with the staking requirement.