Just curious, are you planning a search feature for the forums? I'm starting to see quite a few questions from people that have already been answered.
There is a search form on the "Discuss" page but people don't tend to search before they post and we haven't found a way to merge topics yes. We hope that we can get "tags" out this week so members can help us identify repeats better. The thought is if members tag new posts with tags of similar questions, then we can start merging topics.