I see it simply as a means to ensure some lazy mod gets paid. And by lazy - I do not necessarily mean they do nothing but that that what they are doing is being done lazily - without actually understanding what is being done - simple "hey they said thank you - delete that fucking spam!" - is maybe suitable elsewhere on the forums but it is not that cut/dry here in collectibles.
And if they do not understand that - then they should not be moderating this area of the forums. Let them get paid for deleting spam elsewhere.
I doubt that this is the case. Staff aren't paid on a per deleted post basis and you could probably delete a thousand posts and it wouldn't make a difference to their pay. It's more about how many reports you handle and given that these weren't even reported then it's a moot point. There's more than enough reports to handle and staff really don't need to go looking for extra things to do. I agree that these sorts of thank you posts should probably be left alone though as they're not doing any harm.
@mprep
Why is this bot being used to remove posts on self moderated threads? Doesn't self moderated mean self moderated??
A self-moderated thread wouldn't exclude it from being moderated by staff or abiding by the forum rules. Self-modded just means that the thread started can moderate it how they want and to be aware of that, but mods can and will enforce the rules there.