I agree with the reference aspect, I often search old threads on rs, sometimes going back several years. If I could narrow it down to knowing which one thread it was in, it would save me lots of time.
iop used to be a great reference site for uk/european items and variants, especially with all the details that billyboy,cake,pulsar, mark v, g smith, etc used to post on there...until the threads were lost, and then people stopped posting!
is there a way to have seperate threads, but they all show up in a 'whats new' thread, that would keep the latest 20 or so posts, so people can read anything new, but then also be able to find information in the future.