When a spam post is deleted from an active thread, perhaps consideration could be given to (always) leaving a "post deleted" marker.
Currently they appear to be (at least sometimes) silently deleted, and other well-meaning "post reported" posts assume a different/irrelevant significance.

Thanks for the feedback. While mods see a "post deleted" indication, we have no plans to add that for members at this time. Keep in mind when reporting a thread there is no need to also post that you've done so (it actually makes things more difficult, as we can deal with and remove spam in automated ways, but as you note that leaves the "reported this" post out of place in the thread).

--jeremy

The "post reported" posts should be removed too.

When I (and most mods) manually address an issue, the "post reported" is typically deleted. When the automated tools are used, the fact that a "post reported" post is present would likely not even be noticed.

--jeremy

Excuse me for being dense, but I see no reason to keep track of removed spam.
How? A deleted post is a deleted post. It is irrelevant to those reading the thread if the post was removed because of spam, profanity or porn.

I have recently committed this fox-paw myself!

I think when I first reported a spam thread it did not occur to me to also post that I had reported it. Then I saw other "spam reported" posts and adopted the habit myself without giving it much tought.

When the spam is a thread starter it seems that any "spam reported" posts disappear because the thread disappears... but when it is a spam post within an existing thread then the "spam reported" post remains behind. When I recently did this, it was indeed confusing to others who could see no reason for the report! At that time I realized the obvious... the "spam reported" post creates a problem, so will not do that in future.

After another asked why the thread had been reported, I edited the "spam reported" post to note that the offending post had been removed to preempt sidetracking of the thread.

But I think it is still best to leave no traces of the offending post - that would still potentially give "credit" for a post to the spammer, or would create a special case requiring special handling in the database... best to simply disappear them I think.