The human spammers have definitely increased a lot over the past few months, and I've had a similar change in how I handle comments. In fact, I've been doing pretty similar to what you do. Removing URL's, updating the name (if the email address shows a real name), etc.

What I don't understand is why people bother. Are they hoping for click-throughs from human readers of the comments? None of my sites do the whole DoFollow thing, so there is no SEO value for them to leave these comments on any of my websites....