The problem right now is that most of the *y post are old and no one cares for them.
As a result, most forum goers have gained a habit of ignoring the *y post.
This have the unfortunate effect of whenever a mass bug breakage occurs, despite there exists a *y thread where the bug should be reported to, people make their own thread anyway, often times because they are not aware that a relevant *y exist.

On the other hand, when there is one or few open threads on the topic in the non-*y section, people do tend to reply to them (thou possibly get off topic, which cause another one to spawn to avoid the derailment etc), locking of those threads and telling the posters to go to the *y post instead is counter productive as OTHER players will, once again, not notice the relevant *y, find no open thread to report their own plight to and proceed to make their own thread.

Of course, all of this can be avoided if people actually bother to pay attention to all *ies as well as look through existing threads, including locked ones, but that's simply unrealistic expectations.

Looking at the most recent TI/SA bug out break, despite having THREE *y post/thread on the issue, people are still making new threads. This shows just how ineffective the *ies are*. There are around 50 threads that really does not need to be made in the first place. While I'm sure there are self-important people who would make a separate thread despite being aware of an official sanctioned report thread, I'm sure many of those can be avoided if the player were aware of a relevant *y thread to report on.

So I suggest we make the *y threads that are relevant to players and are made to receive and expect player reports more visible.
There are two ways to do this:
the first is to clean up the *y section, so that people won't ignore it as much.
Take this TI bug for example, the original report thread, which is locked, no longer serves a purpose, it can be removed from *y (possibly a link to it is provided in the other *y relevant to the issue, so people can check it for reference). The update notice and the after-update-still-have-issue-report thread can really be merged into one, in the form of "hey, here is the update, if you still have problem, report here".
But anyway, the idea is, clean it up. If you want *y to be effective, at any given time, there shouldn't be more than 5.

The alternative is providing a mirror thread of the *y in the non-*y section. In that case, even if people gloss over the entire *y section, when they want to report the problem, they will see a very "popular" and officially sanctioned report thread and just report the problem there.

*the fact that some people mistake the 3rd one, that is the "problem persist after "fix" for the first and original report thread and therefore choose to ignore it as they are posting about "still not fixed" as a response to the "update" could also be a contributing factor. But that's more bug specific and not relevant in all cases