Several times recently, I've noticed new questions posted as followups on old (sometime quite old) threads. A recent example would be this .

While this practice reflects that the questioner has made a laudable effort to search for relevant material, I (and perhaps others) find this confusing and not useful. (On the humorous side, I've more than once spent 30 min. writing a response to a posting early in the thread only to discover that the next page has the rest of the thread with the *new* question <grin>.)

I wonder if such followers to old threads are perhaps responding to something in the FAQ? I'd find it more useful to encourage people to make a new posting but include a link to any previous relevant thread. I'd prefer this even when the new question is nearly identical, e.g. "I have this problem that I tried to solved per ThisOldLink, but I'm running into difficulties, ... ."

Any reaction to this, including ideas of how to prompt the link-posting approach, if you think it preferable?