Agreed. Personally I don't think certain kinds of serial spammers will never be good steemians. Some just spam for exposure. Those you can fix. But some have audacity to make posts saying that the point of steemit is upvoting and following each other. It always comes down to the philosophy. Some just need shortcuts but many others wants to game the system.
So I'd say always research the spammer. Read the posts and check comments and also check whether the account is associated/working with other spammers. Some accounts needs to be nuked on sight. Only a small portion of these spammers would become reformed. My personal experience is that it'll be less than 10% of the spammers.