Forum Idea: Killing two birds...

i think alot of the reason why people tend to miss the stickied posts is because
while you draw attention to them, attention is drawn from them. alot of people
get into a habbit of noticing stickied posts and skipping to the 'normal'
threads underneath, as to get to the freshest content, as stickies are normally
posted first and not added to (usually rules or notices.)

also, maybe it's just me, but i find it sometimes hard to immediatly recognize a
new post. which brings me to my all important solution 😛

on the forum list, i noticed that there is a margin on the left hand side not
being used (a table cell containing the &nspb; character.) if the forum titles
dropped the 'sticky' title, and instead a 'push pin' icon was used for a sticky,
and likewise with new/ordinary posts, icons could be used on the left to
indicate a standard post, and if has changed recently (piece of paper, and a
highlighted piece of paper maybe, i dunno)

(didn't know where to post this, i thought after this discussion it could be
deleted if it had no relevance.)

the idea is that people don't notice them as something they're supposed to read
out of regulation, rather a standard post.

it's the same idea as when google came up with adwords, drawing attention to
adverts only diverts attention, as most people get into a habbit of recognizing
ad's and blanking them out, so google came up with the idea to make ad's
standard text, that blend into a web site (now people just adapt to ad-words,
but anyway...) same idea with stickied posts, i think it's the same
across the web; people just tend to ignore them as they're their to be read.

if it was clear that they were stickies, but meant to appear normal, i think
alot more people would read them. again, maybe it's just me.

wow last time i looked there were only 3 stickies . . .