I moderate a forum with a dedicated following of 150-200 users. In general, there are a couple posts an hour throughout the day from my users. There are times that a spambot will find us though and plasters it's filth all over the board. Clean up is easy for a moderator - delete the user and the posts go away. The oldest I recall seeing a spambot's manure sit on the site is about 2 hours.
My problem is that a small subset of my users are expecting immediate responses to their summons to clean up. I certainly am not able to be on call 24/7/365. I don't expect other moderators are able to be either. Other than spam, I don't think we require more moderators. Spam just makes the site ugly for a few hours (at most) and worries users.
I've tried talking with some of the users that complain and do understand their point that it is unsightly to visit the form and see it covered in garbage.
How can I talk with the community to help explain that we can't be around constantly, but also relay that we are all active moderators that have cleaned up after spam attacks? We aren't ignoring the site at all.
Regarding whether I am open to changes in how flags are handled, I am open to such changes and would like to hear feedback on that as well.