Seems like a lot of crabbing about this today.  I thought I'd provide my 2 cents:

-with the lack of functionality of the current internal search, the expectation that one search to see if a topic has already been covered is borderline unrealistic

-with only 10 topics showing on the main page, and several levels to click down through to get to older threads, it's asking a lot to expect anyone to search more than the first 3 pages or so, and a relatively new user will likely not even be aware that there's a way to get to discussion #11 and onward

-with the current format, a discussion becomes next to impossible for all but very regular users to follow once it breaks onto a second page; virtulally nobody is going to read through seven or 8 pages of discussion when coming upon a discussion for the first time before posting.  So left to its own devices, a discussion will ultimately reach a point where it's not much easier to follow than discussion broken over several threads.

I'm not trying to argue for the wonton creation of duplicate threads, but I do think it's a bit ridiculous to blame the user most of the time.  So until we get a working forum interface, which looks like it may be imminent considering the apparent success of the fundraising effort, I would suggest that people try to be as descriptive in their subject lines as possible, but also have a little tolerance for some duplication.

I'm sure nobody else has an opinion on this and the thread will quickly sink, so thanks for reading.