Originally Posted by
stargold
The fact that no-one's forcing anyone to read or post to threads notwithstanding, I guess I see it as duplication of people's time and effort when the same question gets asked regularly, with a range of similar answers and line of arguments each time, not to mention cluttering up the board if it happens to a number of regular topics.
These are exactly the problems.
The clutter then makes it increasingly difficult for others to find the answers to their questions.
And the randomness of who answers any particular query increases the chances of answers being given that are just plain wrong.
There is a lot of work done to merge threads when they can be merged, but it would be good if FTers were more disciplined about looking for information which is already in the stickies (put together with quite a lot of effort by a number of people) - they don't even need to search for it.
I actually think one effective way of keeping these problems under control is to charge $5 or $2 or something like that to start a thread. It could go to charity, if anyone thinks it's profiteering for FT to keep the money. That would give people an incentive to search thoroughly before posting a new thread, as was routine when I joined FT.