Inspired by this recent thread.
Some questions seem to get asked over and over again. This is just a sorta extreme recent example. Made me wonder if “fighting ignorance” might be advanced by educating folk about how to conduct a simple search.
Not HUGE issue. And I imagine I may have violated it on occasion.
I’ve reported similar threads. Sometimes the mods close the new ones, sometimes they merge them with the existing ones.
Depends, for breaking news stories, almost definitely closed or merged outside of having different styles of threads. breaking-news in Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share, a full on Pit thread on the same subject would be left alone as would a Politics & Elections thread.
But for your example, it varies. It may or may not be merged or closed and could easily be left open if it seems to be getting a different audience.
I have no objection to my thread being closed.
I have to admit I missed the October thread when I looked at the search results for “DMV” - despite the OP’s implication that I’m ignorant as to how to “conduct a simple search”, I did in fact do one. In my defense, the title of that thread does not suggest that it would be the same topic as mine, though when I look at the replies I can see that it effectively amounted to the same thing.
There is no need to close it. I’ll leave yours open.
Board software sometimes comes up recent threads with a similar topic - @discobot have you been drinking on the job again?
Hi! To find out what I can do, say @discobot display help.
It’s pretty bad at it though, in my experience.
From what I’ve seen if there are multiple active threads on the same topic they usually get merged, which seems appropriate.
If a thread dies and another one on the same topic pops up, I think it depends on if you’re talking weeks, months, or years when you mean “recent” topic.
I’ll often link to the previous thread if I know there is one, so that people can read it to see what was discussed before. I may even give a summary or a few points I thought are noteworthy. But if it has been a while (months at the very least) I don’t think it’s a big deal if you have a new thread.
I offered my POV in post 5 of that thread. And reported it for closure / merger / mod action at the same time.
They chose otherwise and so be it.
My POV is a month is too soon for a 90+% repeat. A year is fine. In between is … arguable. At 2 months from OP & 6 weeks from last post, and in the same category to boot, I’d have merged & closed if I was a mod.
Fortunately for our community I am not. 
