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Just a thought, but preventing such registrations could possibly reduce those off-topic questions a little.

Edit:

I see off-topic questions on MSO (non-content site) as a little more serious than posting on the wrong content site, so the system can probably make a stronger distinction between meta sites and content sites.

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    Do you mean they should have a account on the parent site before being able to post on meta? I.E. They need to have a StackOverflow account before you can post on MSO?
    – tombull89
    Sep 21, 2012 at 8:57
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    I like the thought but I don't think know if preventing users from posting here is the best solution. Perhaps one of those helpful orange boxes to ask "Are you sure you don't mean to post on SO" if the user has never posted a question on SO. Sep 21, 2012 at 9:19

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I'm completely rewriting my answer since in your first revision, it wasn't quite clear to me what you meant.

I think that in order to see if this could/should be done we'd need to consider some things. First thing first, stats. How many users from those that post off topic questions do not have accounts in any SE site? Personally I've seen very few, but I'm not aware of the actual numbers.

Second, it's not necessarily true that a user with no account except MSO will ask only off topic questions. Say there is a new user that comes here, actually reads the FAQ and asks "What site could be appropriate for my question X?"

That doesn't look like a bad/off topic question to me and actually I think it's a normal question for Meta. I disagree that closing MSO to anyone who does not have an account is the best solution or even a solution at all to a problem which we don't know the size yet.

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  • I guess this is a valid answer, I am just a little bewildered that someone can go out of the way to register and post on the wrong site. Either the warnings signs are not obvious enough, or the penalty needs to be harsher.
    – prusswan
    Sep 21, 2012 at 15:19
  • @prusswan Yes but you see, that's a problem not just on Meta sites, unfortunately (otherwise closing as off topic or migrating wouldn't exist). I doubt that is a final solution yet.
    – Alenanno
    Sep 21, 2012 at 19:33

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