This really sucks for bug reporting. I don't mind this at all for hosting as that cost notable resources (especially their free CI tier) and they can set their own terms, but I want people to be able to report bugs without any trouble. (Although if spam is an issue maybe projects could opt-in to requiring this verification to report bugs).
A work-around is maybe the service desk feature allowing reporting bugs via email but this has issues for proper collaboration:
- The reporter's email is shared.
- The issue is private by default.
- Can't collaborate on an existing issue.
Maybe I'll just go back to mailing lists... Or GitHub has gotten better recently. But GitLab's CI is so much better.