Hi,

I'm relatively new here and spent some time looking around the stickies before asking questions, but i was lucky in that i had time to, and tried to work the (incredibly unfriendly) search feature.

I do cringe when i see new people post and the immediate response is to point them at the anonymous entity known as the stickies. Whilst recognizing the incredible effort that has gone into creating them, there is a huge amount of information in there and the fact that is has built up over time means it can feel quite unstructured, particularly if you are looking for one specific piece of information?

It is often by luck that you manage to find the thing you're looking for. Proof of this - i've seen questions and I suspected the answer was in a sticky and went to quickly look to give a pointer, but gave up after a few minutes (i know, i could do more). What must it be like when you don't know if what you're looking for has already been answered, or how to find it?

Now, i'm not suggesting that someone should spend the time restructuring/indexing the sticky content better (much as it would be welcome) but perhaps if the response was a a pointer to a post in the sticky, rather just to the general area, then people would find the information quicker. Then, those posts become part of the indexed search, so the next person who finds it is directed to the answer, rather than just to the stickies.

I know we have an FAQ in the stickies, but how about calling that out in its own thread?

I also like the idea of the Newcomer Thread where people ask the questions they thought were too silly to post. Perhaps the the first post there is a pointer to the FAQ.