There is no human oversight going through each report anymore. They implemented an automatic system a few expansions ago, and kept it that way for Classic. (Although they did add the possibility to add comments to the reports.)
Basically, it filters out the “noise” of having the individuals report anything and everything, by making them feel empowered even though it accomplishes nothing, so it appeases the masses.
But if there’s truly rulebreaking behavior, this system presumes that it will eventually reach the point where many people will report the cheater in a short window of time.
These days, it wouldn’t surprise me if many people gets reported daily for something. But it does nothing, because it needs more people to report them in a short window of time.
It has been abused in rated BGs for years, like for example muting a healer on the opposing team or getting someone disconnected like when the entire team reports a hunter’s pet for a bad pet name, which then forces a disconnect and a renaming.
Pretty sure it was hansol who got automatically banned over in NA for “wintrading” at 1600 rating, which was quickly overturned because since he complained to Blizzard they went over the reports and noticed it was done in “bad faith”.
(Might’ve been that ret pala instead of hansol over in NA, although I don’t remember his name. Either way, that’s what happened.)
Anyway, it has been a thing for a long time. It saves them money they’d otherwise have to spend on employees dealing with each individual report. Now they only go through the complaints of people who believes they’ve been punished unjustly.
And when you report someone for spamming, it removes the text from your chat window anyway so you don’t get bothered by it anymore. Which keeps the sheep happy, even though it doesn’t really accomplish anything more than that.