So Many Stickies

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It's been bugging me for a while, so I thought I'd bring it up. I don't know if anyone else feels the same way about it; I haven't seen anyone else mention it, so maybe it's just me, but maybe not.

I've noticed that in general the stickies are increasing over time. That's understandable, but the one that's really seems to have exploded is the Haven. I counted tonight, and there's ten stickies in there; it takes up a lot of room, and some of them are pretty redundant. Is all of that necessary? I know the Haven is important, but do so many threads need to be stuck to the top?

For the record, the most of amount of stickies in forums besides the Haven are 6. I counted them all off and will put the results below.

10 stickies - 1 (the Haven)
6 stickies - 2 (General Autism, Getting to Know)
5 stickies - 1 (Members Only)
4 stickies - 2 (Love and Dating, Art)
3 stickies - 5 (Activism, Parents, Social Skills, In-Depth, WP.net Discussion)
2 stickies - 3 (Adult, Women's, Kids')
1 sticky - 5 (Random, Off the Wall, Work & Job, PPR, Adolescent)
0 stickies - 8 (News, School, Health, Games, Television, Computers, Stats, Other Languages)

I would count this forum (WrongPlanet.net discussion) as having six stickies, not 3. The three announcements are stickies too, just a special type with it's own label.

If you start counting annoucements, it's going to be higher in a lot of catogories. I'm just talking stickies though.

Perhaps the stickies could Child Boards with a Button such as -

"Stickies for this Forum"

I find them annoying too. I try to ignore them, but you still need to scroll down to see the "real" posts.

I think I never read these because I tend to stop following posts after they have grown to more than 3 or 4 pages in general. The reason for this is that the system only remembers what posts you've last checked, but it doesn't remember the page you last saw.

So when I want to check the new posts in an old thread that has a lot of posts, I need to go through all the pages because I never know what page I was on last time I checked. I guess this is not a problem for people who check WP every five minutes so they know only to check the last page...

Also, some stickies are totally frivolous like the "what are your favorite/most hated sensations". These kinds of posts do not even need to be sticky; if people find them interesting, they'll keep posting to them, which causes the post to float to the top everytime a post is added.

Sticky use should be limited to important forum/adminstrative messages, IMHO.

If you click on the little blue box in front of the post name (topic) on a thread with new posts, it will take you to the first posts that's new since you last visited the board.

For me at least, the blue boxes don't quite solve the problem even if we're just talking about pages of new posts after the last reading. For one thing, the blue boxes only pop up for recent postings, so if I want to read a topic that hasn't been posted in for about a week, but I lasted posted in it a month ago, there will be no blue box. You can recieve email messages, which I did for awhile, but if you post a lot, your inbox is flooded.

sjamaan: Yeah, some of them are frivolous, lots of them are redundant, and to be perfectly honest, I suspect at least one was only stickied because a certain mod liked it, not because it had any real use. I'm not saying that stickies should only be limited to annoucements, because I can see why some remain at the top and continue to be helpful. But there's clearly no system, and a lot of them aren't helpful or even really relevant anymore. I think there needs to be someone who cleans up periodically.

Interesting that you already said what I came to this thread to post.

Perhaps Stickies could have expiration date.

Stickies are reviewed on a regular basis; stickies are most often created at the request of a member of WP. If a sticky is no longer active or relevant, or if it is not continuing to make a contribution, then it is removed. However, there are thousands of opinions as to what is needed or how things should be on here, and not all can be heeded or followed. There are options to see just your posts, including the upper right corner of the Index list, where one can see all of your posts (threads you have posted in) regardless of forum or time since the last post. If you have specific complaints with a sticky or two, please feel free to contact myself or another moderator, but this is otherwise a transient issue that will be found in one forum now, and a different one in 8 months.


M.

Honestly, I'm not concerned with seeing my own posts; I talked about it because it was brought up here, but my issue is mainly the amount of stickies in the Haven. I rarely go back, and if I do, it's when I started the thread. I do know how stickies are made in general, and as a matter of fact, I was one of the ones who asked for a sticky in the Haven when that post was first created in June of 2007; it's still stickied now. Had the same post come up now, with as many stickies as there are now, I wouldn't. My issue isn't even so much as how often they get removed (there's five stickies that haven't been posted in since May, and that's not including annoucements or in the ones in PPR and this board). It's just that there's so many in the Haven.

I know that periodically a few are removed. The memorial for Starbuline is no longer there; that's the only one I can think of at the moment, but still, obviously some are. Considering it was locked anyway, I'm not surprised. And there are some posts there that I can see as being separate issues (Alcohol and Substance Abuse, Special Silent Forum, ways of coping with your depression). But there are five feel-good about yourself posts that may have started out as separate but are essentially the same now (Post a youtube, Say something positive, Raves, Hope and Healing, Self-affirmation). I understand that there needs to be some positive posts in the Haven too (which is essentially the starting message of Hope and Healing), but are all of those necessary? Yes, they get posts fairly frequently, but they do such because they're consistently stuck to the top. If you go to the last page of Raves, it starts at April and ends in July. Four months equal only one page. Same with a few others. But even that isn't so much of the issue to me as the fact that they're redundant. The Haven has by far the most amount of stickies.

I choose to post this out here because I've never seen another complaint thread about such a thing, and I didn't know if anyone else felt the same. This particular board doesn't get much traffic, but it's still the place to bring it up as far as I can tell (putting it in the Haven itself seemed inappropriate, so that left here). Had no one else agreed with me, I would have simply let it drop there. My problem isn't with a specific sticky; it's with the amount in that board, given that they repeat in general theme. If I had to pick, I'd say unsticky Raves and Self-affirmation, just because those two seem to get the least amount of posts for happy things. However, that's not my decision to make.

I assumed, given both the nature of this board and the fact that moderators obviously do pay attention, that this would be an acceptable way to both gauge others' opinions and still bring it to a moderator's attention. This is more of a site suggestion than anything else. I don't know how you choose which stickies stay and which go, nor how often this is done.

I do realize that there are many opinions on various things. Quite frankly, however, I suspect there would have been no real answer if I had simply PMed a mod to start with, especially considering it's hardly a pressing question. I have PMed mods before with specific questions or concerns (not about this particular topic or recently) and got a direct answer back maybe twice. Beyond that, I don't know which one of you handles such complaints, or if there's a divide at all.

No divide in duties there; I recommend trying more than one of us if there is an immediate issue. I will take a look at the Haven stickies and take at the stickies you listed to see what may be done about them. If you have more questions, feel free to contact me directly.


M.