Oh, yeah, that's true. I guesss it's set up so people first search for their topic and then they always tag on to an existing post, even if it's from years ago.
I think this also means the subject line may have little to do with the poster's question. Confusing things further. This is true in Usenet too -- thread drift -- but in Usenet you usually read all the preceding posts and even tell when the subject changes. It's rare that anyone is confused by a subject line. (and sometimes people add a new subject to the left of the prior one.)
Me too. I wouldn't miss it if it went away, becasue there is rarely enough meat on the post to reply to it well.