Earlier today, I reported spam in this thread and in the “wrasslin” thread in the Pit (same spammer). The mods dutifully zapped the spammer and disappeared the offending posts, but my “spam reported” posts remain. As such, it breaks the flow of the thread and makes it look like I reported perfectly innocuous material. The purpose of the “spam reported” post is to let other posters know it’s been done, so they won’t flood mod inboxes with similar reports. Once the spammer gets banned, those posts have fulfilled their purpose and really aren’t needed anymore.
Spam deletion has gone high-tech – we have the option to “delete post as spam,” which brings up options to “delete all posts by this user” and “ban this user as a spammer” (which sends info to a central spammer registry).
When you “delete all posts by this user,” they just go poof – you don’t go into each thread and see where they came from, though you do get a count of how many posts are involved.
The mod who does that may not be aware of spam reports, esp. in forums that he or she does not moderate, and so not erase them.
So, when one gets left, just report the post as a spam report on disappeared spam, and someone will zap it away shortly.