Integrating StopForumSpam with the Awaiting Approval list

[fury]

So, I converted one of my sites to XenForo today. It was rotting on vBulletin 3.6 for years, and managed to collect over 1,100 registrations that ended up in the Awaiting Approval on the flip side. I am not sure who, if any, of these are real registrations, so I decided I had to sift through them in case they were.

I noticed in about an hour of manual operation, highlighting the email, copying it, and putting it into the StopForumSpam search box, then trying again with the username sometimes, I had only gone through about 50 "people". Then I figured that I could and probably should integrate this searching function directly with the Awaiting Approval page. I know that StopForumSpam has an API for this and will allow up to 20,000 queries a day. I use it to stop registrations on one of my games, so I'm roughly familiar with how to do it in raw PHP, I've just never done it on a massive scale like hundreds of queries at once.

I'd like to modify the admin CP Awaiting Approval section to look up the users' username, email, and registration IP with the SFS database and give me a quick indication of whether the person shows up or not, and maybe if it sees a red flag, automatically check the "Reject and delete" checkbox and uncheck the "notify user" checkbox. That would save me a lot of time.

Is there an addon that already does this? (I could only find the one that queries directly upon registration)

Is it even feasible to have the server making 1,100 HTTP requests to gather this data (considering the Awaiting Approval list is all spit out on one single page and not split up like the user lists and such)?

Assuming it would even work, where should I dig in, and are there any best practices I should know before I go messing around with the admin CP?

Thanks all

 

[craigiri]

This is pretty obvious, but if people signed up over a month or two ago and have not contacted you personally about why they have not been approved, chances are that they are not good potential community members!

Personally, I would probably delete all the older ones...but that's me. You can probably do this with a mysql query.

I don't know of any add-ons designed for mass operations on the users. Member management is somewhat lacking in XF now and updates are planned...still, I don't think most updates will consider those with thousands of years-old registrants.

Someone who knows a little scripting could probably set up a shell script or php script to go through a list and submit to SFS and get a return.....

But, again, think carefully about it. Would you join a forum two years and then never question why you have not been approved?

I always go by the theory "if in doubt, delete the sucker" when I check my pending registrations..and, guess what? I have never once, despite thousands of deletions, received an email from all those would-be spammers asking why they have not been approved.

 

[fury]

Good point. Maybe I'll just kill em all and let em sign up again if they really want to.