The way it is now has been this way for several years now. If Mozilla was going to implement the more traditional way of registering a account like some forum software has then they would have done so years ago. Most people new to this site have a issue(s) they want help on and '''Mozilla would prefer people ask it as a new thread and not hijack an existing thread that has same or similar question'''. The more traditional way of registering would increase the amount of using a existing thread hijacks upon first post. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/forum-rules-and-guidelines#w_posting-support-requests Plus this Ask a Question introduces you to the Knowledge base https://support.mozilla.org/ during the process which may answer some or all of their issue(s) before submitting. A small bonus is this has helped keep Spam threads and posts to a minimum. On the independent forums.mozillazine.org with the more traditional method of registering a new account, there have been more spam attempts vs legit posts by new members first postings each day. Unless you have been around for a while many may not realize Mozilla actually allowed Guest posting during the first year. This was not the best idea then and certainly not now. Mozilla is not signifigantly working on this old Kitsune platform anymore (unless that has changed in last few months). Early last year Mozilla actually moved the site to a Lithium platform that they had high hopes for but it had a number of issues and Mozilla then moved it back to Kitsune after a while. Btw now that you are registered you can discuss about this in https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/forums/contributors as this Firefox section is for desktop Firefox.