I can agree to this. I think if you are spending long hours talking to the one you bait, this could be more of a waste of your time than theirs.I am not a scambaiter, I am more like a scamhunter, or scamcatcher. I was always opposed to baiting the same scammer for months, talking to him on YIM for hours, as I believe all these lengthy Yahoo chats waste more time of a baiter than of a scammer. Every scammer has infinity of other IDs and victims, and your chats will not distract him much. Maybe just amuse you, but not of a much help for others. Instead, I was always encouraging people to hunt scammers profiles on the sites - catch as many as you can. You catch a scammer, got his details (picture, email. IP), post it - and move on. Post as many as you can, instead of wasting your time on the same scammer.
This is what was always different between Romancescam and other baiting sites like Eater, etc.. The approach to baiting was always different.
I know some will disagree, but don't try to convince me. LOL I was like that since day one of Romancescam.
However, personally, I like to report them soon as I figure them out (which is quick), but keep the line of communication open to them, so they can continue to send me email. If I chat, I may not spend more than 20 minutes of my time, every other day. But I keep it open for them to talk to me so that if they want to take it to the point of money request, I will then get all their info on that as well. I personally feel this can be important, so that another person who may be a victim of them, if they get nervous about their scammer, they will be able to find in researching,not only the fake profiles, fake pics, Nigerian IP or whatever, but also the particular money request and details may match what they were dealing with, hence be that much more convincing and revealing. I think also when you can share personal emails, it's a lot harder for a nigerian scammer to explain that one away, and pass it up to mere hacking, as how would a random person reporting their a$$ just so happen to also have the same personal dialogues and emails? So I figure in the end, the more stuff on them the better.
thankfully people like you have been the biggest help that anyone could possible have.