How about a mod to automatically (option to turn off) merge posts that are made in the same board with identical subjects.. ?
So if someone else posts a message with the same subject it will be merged together as one
post in chronological order.. latest post is first.
Example as it stands.. 3 posts in the forum
subject: help post: 1
subject: help post: 1
subject: help post: 1
With a mod to merge them... one post in the forum (no matter how old the first post was)
Subject: help
..............post: 1
..............reply: 2
..............reply: 3
Maybe this would work with the way your forum works, but if you ask me, many times this could cause problems. Just having an identical subject, doesn't make two topics alike. Especially one with the subject of "help."
Although without taking a look at the code, I don't know if this would be too hard to do or not. Basically when a new topic is made, the code would scan for all topics posted in the same board with the same subject, and use the merge function of SMF to merge the topics together (I would imagine).