as far as i can tell GMail & Yahoo Mail Beta both have report spam and delete buttons next to each other. seems to be pretty standard out there.

Bob Responds: Good point; now that you mention it, so does my mail client, Thunderbird. The problem with AO-Hell is not so much that they copy everyone else’s questionable UI design in this respect, as the tone-deaf and ham-fisted way they handle spam reports. I know of one discussion list manager who, every time a list member using AOL would accidentally mark a message originating from his list as spam, would be obliged to spend days getting his list’s good name cleared so that all the list members with AOL addresses could get their messages. It happened so many times that he had to just set a rule that he no longer accepts members with AOL email addresses. Strangely enough, he does not have this problem with any other mail domain. Given the ease with which even inexperienced computer users can get free webmail addresses, why should he put up with that sort of thing from AOL?

By contrast, if you “Report as Spam” in GMail or click the “Junk” button in Thunderbird, all that happens is that the offending mail ends up in your spam folder and your Bayesian mail filter is trained to favor considering similar messages as spam in the future. It doesn’t initiate some kind of automatic blacklisting of the sender.