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I'm trying to query out potential profile spam on Blender Stack Exchange using the following query on https://data.stackexchange.com/blender/query/new. It's not perfect since I'm still just testing out this Stack Exchange feature:

enter image description here

This is the query:

SELECT u.Id AS [UserId], u.DisplayName, u.Reputation, u.WebsiteUrl, u.AboutMe, u.Location
FROM Users u
WHERE u.WebsiteUrl != ''
AND u.AboutMe LIKE '%[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]%'
AND u.Reputation = 1
AND u.Location != ''
AND u.DisplayName LIKE '% %'  -- Checks if there is at least one space in the DisplayName
GROUP BY u.Id, u.DisplayName, u.Reputation, u.WebsiteUrl, u.AboutMe, u.Location

But I noticed that some profiles don't show up in the query result like this profile with User ID 195420 (I hope nobody edits it just yet)

screenshot of data.stackexchange.com

Here's the query result. What am I doing wrong?

screenshot of a profile spam

EDIT/UPDATE Just to give some context:

Thanks to @Thomas Owens's answer. So I guess the only way to parse out profile spam on a daily basis is to use client side JavaScript scraping? No other solution?

I want to use these results to populate a Profile Spam Detector chrome extension in real time, check maybe every 5 minutes and populate the list. In this list I can easily click the profile and manage/delete it. This is what I have so far using JavaScript scraping the new users page 1. I'm looking into UserStalker to see if perhaps it's a potential solution to send notification to the chrome extension.

profile spam detector

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  • Why not via the Users screen, sorted by CreationDate? On small-ish site like Blender, there are around 2-3 pages for a day, so if you check it daily, should be easy to spot spammers based on name or avatar. Not ideal, but think it's better than scraping. Commented Jul 25 at 13:58
  • @ShadowWizard yes currently I'm using javascript to fetch this url and scrape the data. But I was hoping to use some query from some SE API instead of javascript. I made a chrome extension where the spammers will just popup in this app to make it easier. But yes it's a small site and you could easily identify these users. But as the site grows this method will not be feasible anymore. Commented Jul 25 at 13:59

1 Answer 1

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SEDE isn't real-time. The account was created today. SEDE was last updated about 5 days ago. The account will show up in the next synchronization between SEDE and the sites.

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  • Hello thank you for the quick response! Oh nooo so that means there is no way for me to filter out profile spam but just via javascript then on client side scraping? :( Commented Jul 25 at 13:39
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    @HarryMcKenzie You could use the API. I would probably recommend that over scraping. But SEDE is only updated weekly, so if you want anything close to real-time, you'll have to use something else. Commented Jul 25 at 13:47
  • Sorry I'm confused.. As I understand it's impossible to get real-time data via the API. Just close-to-real-time is possible. Right? The only real-time I could possibly get is thru fetching this url and then parsing it via JavaScript. Or am I wrong? When you say API and SEDE what exactly is this API page you mean? But this API page is not real-time but just close-to-real-time right? Commented Jul 25 at 13:56
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    @HarryMcKenzie The Stack Exchange API. You do have to query it, but an API key gets 10,000 daily requests and up to 30 requests per second. You can query the /users endpoint, perhaps with some filters, to get some or all of the users on a site. Commented Jul 25 at 14:00
  • Thank you for sharing really appreciated :) Commented Jul 25 at 14:11
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    @HarryMcKenzie you know we have UserStalker, right? Ping me in the TL or drag me into a room if you want to talk.
    – rene Mod
    Commented Jul 25 at 17:02
  • @rene thank you for sharing! I'm trying to create a profile spam detector chrome extension which currently "works" very simple detection like this that stalks these profiles. Which I can easily click open the extension and see a list of detected spam. And each item listed can easily be clicked to manage/delete profile. With UserStalker this probably won't work as it is only for the command line and can't send notifications to the browser? Commented Jul 26 at 1:54
  • @rene thanks for letting me invite you to chat.meta.stackexchange.com/rooms/1761/userstalker Commented Jul 26 at 2:32

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