So much spam today!

Agreed

And every time someone posts a reply to the spam post it alerts the spammer that they've got a live one.

If you come across spam post, just report it. No need to add a reply to the post saying you've reported it. The Webmaster will deal with it.

I don’t like feeling that way either, but I think it’s a fact of life these days. I like being able to “report” and let the webmaster make a better judgement than me.

No need to add a reply to the post saying you've reported it. The
Webmaster will deal with it.

Except I'd rather see/issue the quick "reported to webmaster" response than see a line-up of responses from nice people who don't recognize that it's spam or advertising (although I just hit the report button when it's AI). While it doesn't happen every time, that does occasionally occur. Also, some responses may be from tag teams in cahoots with the spammer to make it look like the real thing: also deserving of a short report post.

Per the community guidelines:

"Report guideline violations. Notify the moderators by using the "Report" link that appears alongside each post when you are signed in."

"Do not post in reaction to guideline violations. "

While the common practice here is for folks to post things such as "Reported to Webmaster", I've seen the webmaster politely say that he'd prefer folks not post a response and instead just use the report function.

Then you also have folks post "don't post" a response on the same thread when in actuality the approved action is just report "the report". Every posted reaction no matter how well intentioned brings the offending spam to the top of the queue.

With all of this said, I'm sure the great folks at Rick Steves can deal with well intentioned "reported to webmaster" reactions with equanimity.

This place is politely policed and they bend over backwards to be both accommodating yet keep this place up to their standards. (In the future, malevolent AI robots will rule this place and harvest our traveling thoughts to fuel their evil ambitions-- that's what I'm hearing from my friends that travel from the future.)

Happy travels

Well, in the big picture there are SO many more concerning issues to fall on a spear for these days, IMHO.

As long as we don't actively engage the culprit, short-report someone publicly whom you're not VERY sure is a culprit, or report- respond with hostility/snark/inappropriate language, I don't see the problem. LOL, some of the report-responses are pretty funny (without breaking guideline #2) and who doesn't need a good chuckle these days!? :O)

Spam! Spam!! Spam!!! Spam!!!!
(Not so) Wonderful Spam!!!

Apologies to Monty Python.