Allow me to quote my suggestion from last year:
How about automatically merging them? Like this:
-image snip-
The post is untouched, but the black parts aren't shown anymore. Now that I type it, I realize this is probably much more work to do. And even more work if the second post is on a new page.
This should also work fine with "Reserved" posts, and since posts aren't really merged, the post size limit shouldn't be a problem either. If the new post doesn't count as a bump, rule #32 becomes obsolete

That'd probably require backend development work (changing how posts are grouped into pages) on theymos's end and I don't have access over that.
@mprep
How about if the merge script at least could preserve the post date and time in what it merges when it finds consecutive posts that may not have been consecutive posts initially due to deletion of posts in between.
In my opinion it's beneficial to preserve the post's date and time when they get merged for whatever reasons but especially with your script. Reporting violations of rules 21 or 32 is another thing, but I'd like them to preserve the timeline for mergers ideally too.
While it'd be great to also preserve the date of the original post, I don't really see a good way to add it to the post in a way that's both elegant and doesn't editorialize too much. Aside from separating posts by lines, adding a mod note and perhaps fixing broken quotes, I (and it seems most mods) generally prefer to keep the content as untouched as possible.
Find the merged post, hover your mouse above the post date, and it shows who last edited it.
Yeah, I know that, but there must be someone who reported those posts.
I don't think that merging should happen in all cases, especially when time difference between two posts is months or more.
I just got 7 posts from back in 2023 deleted. It looks like someone is reporting a lot of old posts.
@mprep: why merge those? What happened to this?
It looks like there is a bot doing this work.

I have an automated bot that detects potentially mergeable posts and I've recently started going through its backlog and merging posts that violate rules 21 and / or 32.
I don't like how this bot is working right now.
Some of my posts are not that important to be restored, but I see no reason to merge a post where I replied to other member with my older posts.
If someone starts reporting old posts for consecutive posting, AFAIK those reports tend to get marked as bad. As for there being months between posts, that's not relevant for rule 32 and especially rule 21. In regards to the bot, as I've mentioned, the bot only does the detection (giving me a list of links to posts) and I go through each detection manually, reviewing and deciding if and which posts should be merged, which I then merge using a userscript, whose results I review after it completes the merge.