[Gio~Logist]

Not at the moment. It's been requested and something like this would very well be integrated in the next version, but right now it's completely forum based. Meaning it will literally create a pure Q&A directory.

If we go for the per-thread feature it'd probably just start off as disabling per thread in existing Answer Forums (as you mentioned), rather than assigning a thread the Q&A functionality. It just seems messy and pointless to allow people to randomly ask questions throughout the forums using this functionality, as oppose to allowing them to do it in a location in the forums where they can expect to be answered, and view other questions and what not as well. That's why yahoo answers worked so well I think (with a lot of other reasons of course).