He just isn't correct with that though Treetop.
https://www.phpbb.com/kb/article/phpbb3-permissions/
Not even to go into all the different limits it is possible to set within those groups, but it is quite easy to specify forum or global moderation, and the latter is fundamentally different from global administration. The difference between moderation and administration access is huge. Lemming has simply chosen not to have global moderators for whatever reason, them having admin access is not the problem.
dconstrukt is right, there are a number of ways this problem can be addressed, and I've been pointing them out each time this problem has escalated recently. One or two things were done after the HTCC spamageddon but not enough to last imo. There are a number of additional anti-spam phpBB modifications that could be tried at a software level. Or you can use manual admin validation if anyone is active enough. Or you can change the question & answer set on registration regularly, looks this was done in November but I'd do it at a max monthly given how vulnerable this site has been. Really all these should be done especially if we're not going to have some active people with proper moderator powers. Though not having that is just crazy and I wish people wouldn't be silly about it.
Go to any large gathering, like a festival or a sporting event say, and you get stewards, first aiders, security, people cleaning up and emptying the bins. Those people are necessary, helpful and a good thing. Unless you're being a complete dick of course. An internet forum is no different. The owner / admin sets the boundaries and mods are there to maintain those and keep everything running how they've been told. On this site Lemming obviously would only want mods to remove spam and move posts if in the wrong forum. Plus possibly just being available if a member needs help with something. So that's all they'd do.
Moderating on the internet really doesn't make you feel big or special if you are more than 12 years old, most of the time its just a bit of a pain in the ass. But if your role is purely to deal with spam then that's just easy and there's no reason to take it beyond that, but if that's not enough just have them move posts to a hidden forum for review rather than deleting them, create a sinbinned user group rather than letting them ban people, christ there's all sorts of ways. It is not giving someone power, it is just letting them help out in a way that is really needed.
Given that the alternative approach led to the utter destruction of the site during the busiest week of the year and the site having to be hacked to fix it I think any apparent fear of someone basically just having a couple of extra buttons on their forum page is absurd.
