Except I use these specially created users that can access private categories.
The reasoning for this is people really don’t want to create yet another account “somewhere” these days. So for information that is short-lived, months or max two years, I either use a login that has read-access to the public areas on the site or a specific login which access to a closed category.
This approach seems to bring more readers and some convert to actual users if they find other interesting stuff on the site.
Having a required login keeps the site clean.
Only writing this as a use case scenario of how someone uses his Discourse, nothing more. As a developer I usually get interested when people do things I didn’t envision.
But since this can be solved by adding another group with different rights where you add the needed users it’s no biggie.