There's already a load of ads here, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of stuff that is intentionally inflammatory or encourages obnoxious, low-quality posting.
Is abandoning ship the only option when self-moderation fails and the admin isn't constantly active?
Are you planning on leaving?
The admin is surprisingly pretty active for a board of this size. He just doesn't delete spam but only comments.
I delete posts with CP as soon as I see them, which does happen from time to time. I generally leave shill posts up unless they’re bot spam or have received a few reports. I may start just outright removing the shill posts as they don’t fit the site theme or lead to discussion.
Maybe there should be a thread where other imageboards could be listed as a containment of sorts? That might help to solve the problem perhaps.