Discovered this bug when trying to do some fancy invites that add a user to a couple of groups and direct them to a topic, which would apply nicely across logged in, non-logged in, and new users.
To repro:
Create an invite that lands on a topic that your test user can access already
Add a group to the invite (which your user isn’t currently a member of)
Login as your test user
Visit the invite link with that user
Result: The test user is NOT added to the group (they should be).
If the user doesn’t already have access to that topic (or is a new user), they are added to the group(s) with no issues.
Agree - I think that I’ve pinned it down a little more though. This functionality used to work, so this seems like a regression. Probably at the time of the fix alluded to in those other threads.
It would likely be appropriate to merge them all together.
Personally I believe this to be a highly valid use case. It permits the use of a single streamlined process to onboard people regardless of whether they are already on the site. Otherwise you need two parallel (and difficult to administer) processes for current and new users.