People who are new to the forum aren't going to have any idea that there is a mammoth archive of discussions on their question, and, even if they knew it, they aren't going to figure out how to access it right away, anyway. On top of that, truth be told, often, the old threads aren't as coherent a discussion as people remember--so a new thread sometimes becomes a tighter, clearer, compendium than what was said before.

It would be nice if there was a mudcat folkwiki where entries could be created that were distilled from   the threads that are not BS, but what a lot of work it would be--