I think that would get even more frustrating and untidy, kat. It's a big world.

In principle I much prefer it when there is one thread on a topic, or at least on an aspect of a topic. So with the Iraq war, stuff about demonstrations is different from arguments about the rights and wrongs of the policies, so just having one thread wouldn't seem right.

I don't think there's any simple way. Now that we have the ability to have long long threads split into 50s, I really think we ought to use that a lot more as a way of cutting down on the number of new duplicated threads.

It's good practice, when starting a new topic, I feel, to look for an existing old thread and add on to that instead, if there isn't an current thread where the post would fit. But more times than not there is going to be a current thread like that.