Divya's ideas:

1. Ask for help on Twitter (or other channels of communication) for an Ops team on IRC
2. Do a basic vetting of positive responses back. Send them a basic list of what to disapprove of and what kind of users should be banned/muted
3. Select about 10 of them to man the IRC channel so most time zones are covered.
4. Check the logs to make sure the ops are doing their job once a day or more.


And:

With any new initiative, it is vital that there is strict moderation and control on the community-service areas, because this is when most people eager to help or contribute join and then get disappointed & leave when they see childish or spammy content that appears to have no love from the creators of these communities.

I feel the IRC channel and the 'forums' (why call them forums if they are Q&A?) have started looking ignored. I have tried my best to be an active admin (I had to shut down like 4 or 5 spammers on the IRC channel within seconds of each other) but I cant be doing this 24/7. Ideally, representatives of W3C or perhaps whoever is engaged full-time with this initiative must take turns to make sure there is active moderation for most parts of the day (I understand not all timezones can be covered, but if we can get 80% coverage that would be great). 

To this end, I think what would mitigate some of these spammers is:
1. Remove WebIRC from the site, point people to IRC clients and a gentle introduction to IRC and focus on providing details on IRC channel info. https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=19430

2. Make sure spammers do not register on the site:
https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=19429

I am sure there are also automated bots that can ban people who flood channel with same message, I would consider getting one of them (perhaps someone at W3C may have a bot already?).