In reply to christicehurst.

christicehurst, you're probably right.

This ticket has been open almost a year https://bbpress.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/2498 and there is already a plugin https://wordpress.org/plugins/bbpress-post-topics/ which does the same thing so it is just a matter of incorporating the plugin into core

but it just sits there like so many other much older tickets.

If the bbPress dev team need help I wish they would ask for it rather than just letting things slide month after month. Wordpress is also responsible here since they have no apparent interest in even monitoring the state of bbPress.