access questions….

I can not seem to control spammers, and since WP does not seem to have email verification for members, I have to set member signup to manual; here are my questions:

I manually add new contributor to submit posts on blog:

1: In order for contributor to set thumbnail, it says the
member does not have upload access; I have been looking
here and there, but can not find how to enable so that
contributor members can upload images, where can I find this option.

2: By default, when a contributor submits a post review, it is
automatically set to draft. Is there a way I can change a trusted
members status to live submission? This way when they submit, then
they will not to wait x number of hours before their draft is approved.

3: What is the best way to set current/future blog links
to nofollow? or is nofollow the default, when i review the
links in html, i see no “nofollow” attributes in the link….

4: Since WP does not seem to have email verify for all member
signups; How do you guys control or stop spam? or is doing
the manual “add user” the best option?

Thank-You