I am not at all surprised that most of your recent "guest"/spammer check came up in China - it seems that alot of the spammer business moved there after some major busts in the US and in Eastern Europe.
I visit some other forums which are electronics-oriented, and they do not use the simple, old-school method that Justin/we have here for being added to the forum and thus able to post. Because those other websites still use an automated method for adding users, the spambots are taking over the forum - greatly reducing the value and clarity/usefulness to almost nil. The spambots continuously login to the forum and wait for any new thread to be started or a reply to an existing thread to appear - that is the trigger which causes them to initiate a post on the same thread with some totally bogus advertisement or scam. The admin folks eventually kill the spambot account, but as they haven't changed their policy, another spambot just connects and creates a new userid, and the cycle repeats. The spambots are like a swarm of mosquitos buzzing against your screen-door, looking for any hole they can fly through even if they get swatted after their first "bite".
I like our approach better - you still see the mosquitos trying, but we manage to keep the majority of them out.
