Stickies

conolan

Should there be an award for the moderator who uses the LEAST amount of stickies? Just seen one forum with 10 and another with 9.
Bit like the government having 57 priorities (ie. none)

star-pants

Curious -- why do you think there should be an award? Do you feel stickies are a bad thing to have too many?

Ponster

star-pants wrote: »

Do you feel stickies are a bad thing to have too many?

If you have too many stickies in a forum then people tend to ignore them.

oscarBravo

People ignore stickies. I don't think the number has much to do with it.

conolan

10 stickies means you don't see the 'real' postings on average screens until you scroll down. Oscarbravo is correct that people ignore stickies, therefore why have lots of them.
Save the planet - less stickies

Dades

I hate stickies too.

The sooner we can get rid of the "Stickie That Shall Not Be Named" the better!

Some forums could do with merging stickies, big time.
The Classic Cars forum did it last year to great (aesthetic) effect.

conolan

Oscarbravo has just 2 (TWO) stickies on opensource forum. Thats the way to do it (although the MCD crap could be incorporated into the rules)

eVeNtInE

This post has been deleted.

Dudess

Why does it annoy you OP?

I had to re-title the sticky that shall not be named because of non-stop contravening of that rule. The best part of three years on and it's clear it still can't be done away with it.

delta_bravo

Dudess wrote: »

I had to re-title the sticky that shall not be named because of non-stop contravening of that rule. The best part of three years on and it's clear it still can't be done away with it.

Maybe yes in the forum you mod but do the likes of Cricket or Teaching & Lecturing etc. need it?

Random

We cut all the stickys right down in the Mobiles forum. We had the obligatory one, the charter and the FAQ.

This wasn't enough for people. We had to add another about phone recommendations and another about the iPhone forum. Unlocking is such a hot topic this had to stay as well.

There's only so much you can do and stickys are generally a good thing with topics that come up over and over again.

dr.bollocko

I know what you mean. Less stickies and differentiate them more. If you have one really big shiny sticky then the new folks might actually read it. Nobody is going to read 9 stickied threads before posting on a forum.They won't even read one.

Random

A lot of stickys tend to be more of an instruction / command and it's the title of the sticky itself and not the contents that's the most important. Sorta like a mini-charter / hot topics list made out of Stickys.

e.g.
Sticky: Don't post about MCD
Sticky: Don't post about the iPhone
Sticky: Read the FAQ
Sticky: Only post about unlocking in the unlocking thread
Sticky: You must post this info if you're asking for advice on a phone

AlmightyCushion

One of the many things I've been planning to do is cut down on the amount of stickies in the forums I mod (obviously I'd run it by the other mods first). I haven't really been arsed though. Must get around to it though.

conolan

I think ther's a need to differenciate between housekeeping stickies and interestingpost type stickies. Housekeeping one could certainly benefit from Randoms suggestion.

A lot of stickys tend to be more of an instruction / command and it's the title of the sticky itself and not the contents that's the most important. Sorta like a mini-charter / hot topics list made out of Stickys.

Be even better if the housekeeping type could be tabs in a line across top therefore not pushing REAL content down the screen. Software might not allow that option though.

Also the announcement type post (currently about phot exhibition) pushes everything down. Screen space is valuable. Should be used carefully.

Faith

I think that if a thread is constantly being bumped, it doesn't need to be a sticky. For example, in the Cooking & Recipes forum, the "Here's what I had for dinner last night" gets posted on every day, so it's always on the front page. There's no need to sticky it when it's so popular on it's own. I tend to only sticky important threads that won't constantly be bumped, like an FAQ one in C&R etc.

Overheal

oscarBravo wrote: »

People ignore stickies. I don't think the number has much to do with it.

Im wondering if theres anything vBulletin can do about that.

Can mods post Forum-Specific Announcements? Those seem to grab attention. You could post the charter as a permament announcement; each user need only read and close it once. If information changes you can re-post it as a new announcement and close the old one.

Or if there is a way to change the background color on the sticky's row in what is essentially a spreadsheet of threads, whenever their information changes. eg. When the charter gets changed it would be in bold text, plus have a light red background/highlight.

Red Sleeping Beauty

conolan wrote: »

Should there be an award for the moderator who uses the LEAST amount of stickies? Just seen one forum with 10 and another with 9.
Bit like the government having 57 priorities (ie. none)

Yes. I agree. The stickies are bloody awful eyesores to wade through.

oscarBravo wrote: »

People ignore stickies. I don't think the number has much to do with it.

I do.

If there's one sticky thread with all the info laid out in easy to read form then folk will read it rather than have to read through all of THE REALLY REALLY IMPORTANT STICKIED THREADS THAT ARE WRITTEN IN CAPITALS TO EMPHASISE THEIR IMPORTANCE..... and then other ones *****with stars so that you can't miss them***** and the other "Read me First" ones and then the "Charter (updated xx/xx/xx) read before posting" ones.

*btw, I wasn't shouting at you there, just trying to get a point across.

Random wrote: »

We cut all the stickys right down in the Mobiles forum. We had the obligatory one, the charter and the FAQ.

This wasn't enough for people. We had to add another about phone recommendations and another about the iPhone forum. Unlocking is such a hot topic this had to stay as well.

There's only so much you can do and stickys are generally a good thing with topics that come up over and over again.

Why not condense all your stickies into one thread. Titled something like "Mobiles&PDA Contents page" with links to the important threads you don't want to lose track of ?


You've got two stickies there that say "read me first" .
How do you expect anyone to read either first ? And then read the 5 other ones ?

Terry

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

One of the many things I've been planning to do is cut down on the amount of stickies in the forums I mod (obviously I'd run it by the other mods first). I haven't really been arsed though. Must get around to it though.

Yeah, that improve AH one had run its course for the time being and wqe really don't need another one until towards the end of the year.
I'm considering bringing back the happy post of the day sticky though.
That just leaves us with 2 or 3 stickies in AH.


OP, in the past the stickies used to appear on every page. Be glad that is no longer the case.

Also, the MCD one stays everywhere, including mod, hosted and private forums.
No discussion means no discussion.

turgon

GuanYin condensed the previously 5 politics rules stickies into one big rules sticky. So now its just that one and the silly you know which sticky, as well as 4 others to help users out with links and books etc.

Way to go, in my opinion.

A user mentions OB having only 2 stickies in Open Source, but in fairness a forum like Open Source is not going to attract as many trolls and messers as politics or others.

conolan

Below is the list (as of 21 April) of the stickies in ARTS (excluding Sci-fi and TV). Spot the one who forgot the unmentionable concert promoter.

Anime & Manga 6
Art & Architecture 6
Arts & Crafts 8
Audio-Video Editing 4
Boards Drama Group 6
Tattoos & Piercings 9
Celebrity & Showbiz 3
Comics 6
SUB-Comic Production 3
Creative Writing 9
Digital Art & Design 5
SUB-Animation 3
Literature 7
SUB-Reading Logs 1
Musicals 4
Mythology 2
Photography 7
SUB-Digital Darkroom 3
SUB-Photo Challenge 2
SUB-Photographic Expeditions 4
Radio 6
Theatre & Performing Arts 4
Film Awards 7
Film Production 8
Film Reviews 5
Films 6

EKRIUQ

Accommodation & Property has 12 stickies, at this stage it just a case of clicking the link and scrolling until I can see some threads. I was just thinking that it's an awful amount of wasted space and even though there open threads some haven't had posts in years. I'm sure there could be a way of condensing them.

Red Sleeping Beauty

Terrestrial has a whopping 13!!

conolan

Some random good one

music reviews - 2
Clubbing - 1
Omaha Variants HHs & Theory - 3
Soap Opera - 2

And some baddies

GAA - 8
Archery - 9

aidan_walsh

Overheal wrote:

You could post the charter as a permament announcement; each user need only read and close it once. If information changes you can re-post it as a new announcement and close the old one.

And if people want to review the charter to know if a post falls within the rules? Better to leave it as a sticky. An announcement to notify of changes sure, but don't remove the rulebook altogether.