Bit of background first: So about a month ago, I reported a user who had a spam rate of around ~96% (of 500 submissions). A very very clear spammer. Most of their spam were to a sub that neither I nor they mod, who appears to be allowing it. Some of it is to a sub they mod. A very tiny amount is to the sub I mod but it's years old.

I have tried several times previously via the bot, but the bot did nothing any of the times. This time, they had created a subreddit for their spamming so fuck it, I finally modmailed /r/reddit.com (I'm lazy, alright?). Admin said they'll look into it. Subreddit got banned but the user was untouched. Urgh, fine.

Fast forward to now. The user has continued spamming his stuff (so probably around ~97-99% now, I've not checked) and has ANOTHER spam/SEO subreddit and on top of that, has created an alt (which is also at 96% as of now). That's 39 on the main and 24 on the alt in the space of a month.

The only difference I can see between this user and the traditional spammers is that they're not being removed by the subreddit (and it's FULL of it). I understand that the 10% is merely a guideline, but when we're talking about just under 10x as much as that with clear breaches outside of that sub, I really feel that it's gone way too far and raises the questions...

How much difference does this special "mod approval" ability make? Can they just spam willy nilly? Is there a limit at all? Even if they've displayed clear intent to spam? Is there much point in reporting spam from anywhere that isn't primarily on our subs? What if we allowed this amount of spam to occur?