It's true that only two stickies don't take up much of the screen, but it is the most 'active" part of the screen.
And when I use enough zoom that font sizes are easy to read, I get about 4 threads onscreen at a time. And 2 stickies are 50% of that first screen.
I should also plead guilty - I hit some forums so often that any new posts are going to be in the first 3-4 threads. If there were no stickies, the new threads would always be on-screen as soon as I opened the forum. It's not a big burden to page down, or page down twice, to see the new threads after the stickies.
I think the overall answer is that it IS very good that new members and visitors see some things easily and automatically without any learning curve Hence there is value in having some stickies constantly in everyone's face.
>> Many, if not most websites you visit place ads on the side of their pages (including ATP) and people tend to block that area out when viewing a page.
Sadly, yes. But I think that most of us tend to get tunnel vision even when not avoiding ads. The most usual answer for people asking Dave for a new feature is always that "we already HAVE that feature, it just doesn't jump off the page and thrust itself down our throats".
I think the long-term health of any website depends greatly on attracting new members, and they hardly EVER come to a new website eager to spend thought and attention on finding controls and navigation aids.
