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Note: I am not asking for help here, My own personal problem has been solved. This is a suggestion that might help other people in future with the same problem.

I was having a problem creating a proper, registered account. Someone on the Science Fiction community, where I was participating as an unregistered user, suggested I come to Meta to ask for advice. So I came here, and found that I need to register and log in before I could ask a question.

There was a big paradox there: I was unable to register an account, but I couldn't ask for help as to why or how without having an account.

In the end I solved the problem by asking for help on Science Fiction, and having a moderator migrate my post to here. Not an ideal solution. If I hadn't already been known on that community, it might have been closed and deleted.

I am probably not the only person ever to be stymied by this. There should be a way for users to find out why they aren't able to register without having to go through what I did. One way to solve this may be to allow questions from unregistered users here.

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    The inability to ask here without registering is intentional; see Should Meta allow anonymous questions?. If you're having a problem registering, the proper ways to get help are to either ask on the per-site meta (in this case Science Fiction & Fantasy Meta), where your question would not have been closed or deleted, or to use the Contact form on the bottom of the page.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Oct 30, 2020 at 23:01
  • Well, I wasn't asking a question. My own personal problem has been solved. I was offering a suggestion that might help other people in future. And as for the older discussion, it doesn't cover the specific problem I had.
    – Pete
    Oct 30, 2020 at 23:07
  • That text ("does this answer your question") is automatic text generated by the system. I've since edited the above comment to replace the automatic text with my own text.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Oct 30, 2020 at 23:09
  • Is this helpful, or a duplicate: meta.stackexchange.com/q/330894/282094 and can't you use the Contact Link: meta.stackexchange.com/contact
    – Rob
    Oct 30, 2020 at 23:56

1 Answer 1

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As per Should Meta allow anonymous questions?, asking questions as an unregistered user is disallowed here, to ensure that those participation in this site is limited to users who actually participate in the Stack Exchange network of sites. This quality measure also helps to curtail participation by spammers and trolls, as well as help reduce the incidence of users who ask off-topic questions intended for other sites here (which does occur every now and then).

While I understand that you were participating in the network as an unregistered user, there are other ways for you to get help registering that don't require you to ask here on this meta site.

First of all, this is not the only Meta site in our network. Each site also has its own, individual meta site, which you can participate in by having 5 reputation on the main site. You can access this per-site meta from the main Q&A site, by clicking the site switcher in the top right, and clicking "meta". In this case, that meta site would be Science Fiction & Fantasy Meta. Even as an unregistered user, you would have been able to ask your question there, and it wouldn't have been closed and deleted as an off-topic question.

Alternatively, you could use the Contact link at the bottom of the page, to contact the support team at Stack Exchange, Inc., which would have also resolved your problem.

In summary, allowing unregistered questions here isn't a good idea, for the reasons I pointed out in the first paragraph, and there are other ways to get help registering that don't require asking here.

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    Is Contact actually being read nowadays? We've seen plenty of reports that indicate people not getting a response for weeks.
    – Mast
    Nov 8, 2020 at 14:58
  • @Mast From what I've seen, account issues such as merges, recovery, etc. and other tickets that can be directly actioned by the Support team are handled quite quickly, within one business day. Other reports that require forwarding to other teams (e.g. to the Community team) take longer. In this case, the Support team could quickly action the request.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Nov 8, 2020 at 21:50

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