[ludachris]

I've got two suggestions for this modification:

1. Gray out the message box in the New Thread form for an Admin-specified amount of time (maybe 10 seconds), which will give the user time to browse the links that are automatically populated by this feature. In the grayed-out message box, add text that tells the user to click the links above to ensure their question hasn't been answered before. This feature should likely have the option to be disabled on a per-forum basis.

2. Allow the admin to enter a hard-coded link below all of the threads - this would be helpful for sites that have an FAQ thread or forum where common questions are cataloged/linked.

I think the above two features would force more people to use the features.

Another thought, and I don't know if this is possible, would be to have a cookie track whether or not the similar threads that show up have been read or not - this way, the user cannot click on the message box to type their question until they've clicked on all the links in the similar thread box. That would be even better than the first suggestion above.