Well, I hit "back" and hosed my reply, but here's the gist of it...
First of all, in some forums, people are coming to look for advice. They may not have an opinion or background story to go with it, they just need help. We shouldn't turn them away because they didn't have more to contribute.
As for duplicate posts, it's an annoyance, but sometimes things work that way. Take for instance:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=105064
I took Cynthetiq's sage advice and hit search, advanced search and plugged "period" without quotes into the keywords box. I tried it as "titles only" and "search entire posts" I also tried all forums and just Tilted Sexuality. At best I got 8 results, none of which related directly to that topic. I also verified that the timeline was set to "Any Date" and "And Newer". So, the mod closed the topic with seemingly good advice that in reality helped nobody. That's why I suggest a link or two. Sure, it isn't the mods jobs to be our personal human search engines, but sometimes searches just don't work. It's not just ehre, it's not just vBulletin, it's many BBs on many sites... *shrug*
ubertuber - hadn't seen the search issue. Thanks! I was quick replying and posted before yours refreshed for me.