But there in lies the problem: As soon as someone else asks a question about 'best shampoo', then that's 71 threads to trawl through. And then someone else asks, so that's 72 for the next person, and so on and so forth. By not using the search you then make it more difficult for the next person who does make the effort to use it. Besides, 70 posts really isn't that much to go through: You can scan the results and see pretty quickly if it's relevant to you.
There's a difference between searching and not being able to find the info you wanted and not searching at all: One is understandable and, by mentioning what you searched for, people can guide you for the next time, and the other is just about as lazy as you can get and quickly fills a forum full of wasted threads. Whilst everyone needs a bit of help sometimes, to be expected to be spoon fed every little thing shows a certain amount of contempt for your fellow owners IMHO.
No thread which answers a question is wasted IMO - there are many other threads whch qualify better for that description. There are about 60 threads hit daily here and I guess I only look at 3 or 4.
As noted above, answering is voluntary and if you don't wish to answer (or answer through gritted teeth) then don't, plus if there are 70 threads which answer the same question, then by definition you only need to select one to look at
And if no one answers the thread because they are so tired of typing out the same information time and time again? OP starts posting "bump", "anyone?". The reality is that someone will post up out of kindness but to post without even trying to search is an abuse of that kindness.
I'm actually quite shocked that someone as intelligent as you, Dorian, would suggest that its OK to simply post questions without searching first and that its fine to clog up the forum with hundreds of threads all saying the same thing. If that's the case, why did you take the time to enter all those threads in the FAQ section?
IMHO (and I do not necessarily express the views of the team here) its fine to search and fail and if you explain that I don't see a problem. On the other hand, if you can't put the effort in to search why should anyone make the effort to help you.