We use CiviCRM to collect anonymous feedback and equal opps data from event attendees in custom fields connected to an event participant role, and to avoid having to create multiple anonymous individual contact records, we have been registering multiple participant instances for a single anonymous record. Unfortunately, following the latest update to 4.7.14, this is no longer possible.
I realise that we've been taking advantage of something many would consider a bug - I'm pretty sure this change is a result of this bugfix: https://issues.civicrm.org/jira/browse/CRM-19550 - but it makes our life vastly more complicated, because we'll have to create upwards of 100 anonymous records and anyone entering data will have to keep track of which participants have already been added (not a problem when there's 10 attendees; definitely a problem when there's 75).
I'm also concerned that if we have to correct information in participant records that are already in the system, we won't be able to without re-assigning the participant contact record, or, worse, that the custom participant data will become conflated.
Is there a way to disable/edit whatever dedupe rule is being used here? (I'm assuming that the participant records are still saved with a unique id and won't get overwritten - if this isn't case, I'd appreciate a heads up)
I think this may be related to this issue: Enable multiple event registration for same purchaser/participant - however, that problem relates to individuals signing themselves up to events, not participants who are being registered by an administrator, and so the suggested fix doesn't apply here (even if it did, it would require us to enable online registration, which we definitely don't want!)