Thanks Andrew. Your suggestion is worthy of consideration IMO, so I have reported it
(little red X) so its drawn to Mike's (and moderators) attention, so we can consider it and maybe make such a change.
The reporting process may be less than ideal for the reporter - your suggestion may help - but the reporting process is the best way to go for us moderators since it groups all the reports for the same post together so we can deal with them efficiently (and it also tracks what we do about it, etc). Bypass the report post function, and we (the moderators) could quite quickly be overwhelmed and lose track of what's been done and what hasn't.
That's why we prefer you to use the report post button.
Now FYI the efficiency is only in the process. Some reported posts are straight forward and we can deal with them in a couple of minutes, but some require a lot of work, perhaps to read an entire long thread to determine context, or to fully investigate say whether a poster is genuine and not a scammer or spammer. Multiply this by the number of reporters and the number of moderators, and it can quickly get out of control. So the reporting process is important - please don't bypass it.
Al.