Agreed, and the current answer, afaik, is “yes users need a full account”.
My point in posting isn’t directly in line with the OP request for a new feature, rather, I’m pointing out two related issues which @Alex_Flom needs to know about, given how discourse currently works.
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If new users fail to validate their account via an authenticator (ie google, if the admin set that up) or by clicking the confirmation link they were emailed, their account will be silently deleted in 7 days (by default)
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According to @codinghorror 's post here, new users will not get digests unless they have logged in once.