cudnt agree more..
same thing happened to me some time back, when i posted something one cheap bugger shouted REPOST in bold capitals like i tried to kiss his girl. it was posted way back n in the end it proved to be useful to many and most of the members saw that for the first time. The fella who shouted in the begining had a post count of thousands just by saying "Ha" Hu" Thanks" (and most of all REPOST i guess) a very few useful threads were started by him.
Im a active member of some international forums and most of them have moderators to do the needful when a merge of threads needs to be done. Hopefully a system like that will come with the beta release of EK. But I have to tell that its our responsibility to keep EK clean and we should all try to minimize double posts. Its just da way u say it when a newbie posted something which is existing, "REPOST" will only make him feel bad about da EK community and mite stop posting even.
and for the members to search before posting, the search option has to be working and reliable which is not the case here.