As a small aside, I always wondered about this catch 22. We are supposed to search to see if a topic has been brought up before, yet we are not supposed to bring it back to the forefront of discussion. So what is the correct course of action?
It isn't really a catch 22. If you do a search for the topic, then most likely whatever answer you need will be in the old thread, and there is no reason to start another.
If your particular flavor of question isn't answered by browsing old threads, then a new topic is the way to go -- and best of all, you can put in your initial post that you have learned x and y, but that does not seem to answer your question z, and thus preemptively shut up the "search button" morons.
