Are the Joomla forums a victim of their own success?  Over the holidays I had a lot of extra time on my hand.  While my wife was working hard to max out my credit cards, I stayed at the house and watched some TV and do some surfing.  I was working on some of my websites and found myself in the Joomla forums looking for advice and solutions to some problems I was having.  

As I looked through the questions on the General, Administration, Installation, and Extensions boards I realized that I knew some of the answers.  Many of them were typical new user questions, and I was able to help a bit with those. 

But, of course, many of these questions had been asked and answered many times already on the boards.  The answers were there.  (One moderator has in their signature "All of the answers are here on the forum.  Use search before you ask.")  But, they are hard to find, especially if you don't know how to phrase the question.  And, with 1.2 million posts on the forum, it sure can be hard to find things, even with the search.  I was looking for a post that I had seen just a few days earlier (but I could not remember which board it was on) and I absolutely could NOT find it with search.  I've found that using Google to search is more effective than using the forum search.

So, I understand the frustration of the moderators who answer a new user question with "This question has been asked and answered thousands of times already.  Search!"  And, I understand the frustration of the new user who feels that they tried the search, and just did not get meaningful results.

My advice?  When searching for an answer to a Joomla question, use Google or Yahoo or one of the major search engines rather than the search built into the forums.  You'll find the answer much more quickly.