People on forums everywhere are always quick to jump in with "do a search" ... the thing is when you run a search you often end up with 500 threads, many of which run off topic early, or are nothing like what you are specifically asking about, or have outdated information, etc.

I think if you don't want to reply to a thread, just ignore it. If nobody has replied in a day or two, and the TS is just sitting there bumping his thread, then someone could ask if the TS ran a search, since the topic had been covered previously. It isn't that hard to ignore a thread if you're not interested in it.