Maybe this has already been suggested, but I never understood why we don’t have a thread for each column posted and then a link directly from that column to the message board.
Whenever I see a new staff report/Cecil’s Column thread from a new person, they always seem to fail to link to the report. It would seem that having that link from one to the other would be also beneficial to getting more members who might not even see that the board exists. (When I found SD back in 02, it was a couple months before I even knew there was a message board).
I wish we could, it would save a lot of moderator end-work. My guess, however, is that it would require front-end programming work, and that’s a resource that is very tight. However, I confess that I don’t know the ins and outs, so I’ll await someone more knowledgable (probably TubaDiva) responding. Sorry that response hasn’t come sooner, Christmas does tend to up-end response time 
The system doesn’t work that way and even if it did it would be needlessly redundant, as the classic columns have been running over and over again since we’ve had a message board.
Not every column, new or classic, generates comment. And people make all sorts of comments and ask all kinds of questions so the way it works now with people is more direct to the needs of the board. A generic “this is the comment thread for this column” would be, I think, boring.