General feedback on the voting system and archiving of feedback

This is feedback about this site and how SE2 feedback is handled. Overall, it's a pretty good system, though the voting system concerns me for bugs and feedback. Archiving increases those concerns.

I have suggestions from months ago that are archived (due to not enough votes I assume), and these fall off the lists, yet similar feedback from others on the same topic come in later on, these also get 'not enough votes' and vanish into the ether. However from what I see, since people don't do a great job often looking for other similar feedback before entering their own, it feels like we're filling this forum up in some cases with gobs of the same feedback that each get 1-3 votes and vanish forever, when the cumulative votes if taken together on said topic would easily pass the criteria of enough votes.

I'd like to suggest that you look into a method to create virtual links between some of these feedback, and perhaps we (the players on the forum) could help police this and help create these cross-links as suggestions back to you. If the admins here agree then the topics could get merged in some form at least for the voting counts. I'd hate to see some good ideas (like some of mine naturally : ) vanish because a weakness in the voting system. A single suggestion with 100 votes isn't much different from 50 people putting in similar ideas and all only get a couple votes.

Archived topics should be recoverable and have a process to be made active again, not sure why feedback from 4 months ago wouldn't be just as valid now, it may take months for some topics to get enough votes, vs. others that get lots right away, both are still equally valid feedback and both should have a chance to earn their votes.