Yeah, I agree. Very frustrating. I just can't see why there are literally 1000's of accounts that have never posted. Sometimes they might have a link or something in their profile so maybe that is it. I just always fear that one day they will all go active and saturate the board beyond recovery
I, like you, block whole chunks of the internet when someone actually spams. Typically if it is from some country I don't care about I'll block the whole ISP or even more. If it's from the US or UK or something I'm a little more selective - blocking a /24 typically.
As part of the maintenance (and forums software upgrade) there was a higher level of Captcha available that I have turned on. Honestly, it is hard to read for me so maybe impossible for a bot? I'm also considering a more aggressive validation process. Perhaps something where "pre-registries" can post in a particular forum and must put something that makes since to get validated. I'm kinda on the fence about that as I also suspect some of bogus accounts are being created by cheap labor in 3rd party countries. I'll give you $.01/forum account to give me type of a deal. Who the heck knows.
Anyway - again - I
REALLY hope I didn't get any legitimate accounts in my cleanup. If I did, please accept my sincere apologies....
-Chak