Topic on Extension talk:ConfirmAccount

I've got ConfirmAccount working on a mediawiki instance (1.28.1) and I notice that there's an email address confirmation step that takes place *before* the account is approved. I'm wondering if that can be removed?

I think the email might easily be missed by the user trying to create their account, and there is an email to the address when the admin confirms the account that seems to serve the same purpose, i.e. they are being informed of their account approval and being asked to reset their password.

As it stands users have to receive two email and click through on them both before and after being confirmed by an admin. I'm wondering if there's some way to remove the first email since the second one would seem to be a sufficient check ...

I think this is a good suggestion/request.

Agreed: the first email address confirmation seems unnecessary and premature — the request may not even be granted.

It seems best simply to have the user submit a request, then (if approved) get a single email telling them they're in and giving instructions on how to proceed.

Having the email confirmed first discourages spam requests and makes it easier for admins to know how serious the request or whether they control an email from a certain domain (e.g. osu.edu or dmv.ca.gov).

Having the email confirmed first results in accounts created with "stolen" emails potentially be flagged as spam by the real email owner. This is something that has happened to us to the point that gmail banned us because too many of their users reported our confirmation mails for spambot accounts as spam.