Moderating a forum is a thankless job. Take it from somebody who was one for a couple of years and then promoted to the admin team (forum.thinkpads.com). Obvious actions as putting somebody in timeout for a day or forever is easy as there are generally well-established rules for doing so. Merging / moving threads or censoring posts is usually left up to the
whims of the moderator(s) and those rules can change from day-to-day and from person-to-person. Depending upon the forum software, these changes may or may not be publicly attributed to the particular mod that did them. Forum logs that are available only to the mods and admins should keep track of those actions (i.e., "who moderates to moderators").
Combining all threads which even peripherally references the software update into one master topic is the
easy thing to do from the standpoint of work for the mod team. However, it makes it much more difficult for the forum user to find and then follow a particular issue that is important to them. About the only way to "have your cake and eat it too" is to duplicate some of the existing hierarchy of the sub-forums into something like this:
- Model 3: Software 2019.40.50.xx
- Driving Dynamics - Autopilot, AEB, TACC, FSD issues
- Battery / Charging / Range - issues related to charging the car and range
- User Interface - problems with screen, navigation, entry/exit, keys, etc.
- Connectivity - WiFi, LTE, OTA update issues
- New Features - options and features added from previous releases
- Model 3: Software 2019.40.2.xx
- Driving Dynamics
- Battery / Charging / Range
- User Interface
- Connectivity
- New Features
- Model 3: Software 2019.40.1.xx
If this is too many sub-forums to support at the top of the page, then create a generic sub-forum called Software Changes and then put these sub-forums under that. The mods then can move the new thread to the appropriate sub-forum. If at first there is some doubt as to which software version is relevant, that can probably take care of itself by having regular users ask for that in the course of normal conversation.
Just my $0.02.