Perhaps this has been covered before, but what is the advantage to consolidating interesting new topics into old tired threads? The travel forums would be much more helpful to people if a new thread could remain on it's own for a few days before it gets dumped into a thread with hundreds, if not thousands of other posts. It takes all the energy out of the thread and when it gets lopped together with a bunch of similar posts.

I don't object to the consolidation. What I object to is the need to immediately take the life out of a fresh thread. Why can't it stay open on its own a few days after the discussion has run it's course and then be filed away into the thousand post megathread?