A "sticky" thread is one that is placed permanently at the top of a forum / category. Even if no one posts in it, it will still show up on the first page. This is often done for special announcements, rules / guidelines, and FAQs.

When a Forum Thread is made 'Sticky' is stays at the top of that Forum 'category' and this is normally done by Forum Moderators.

I hate the ads and pop-ups and surveys !

Use google chrome with ad block and you will see no ads or popups.

Firefox with the adblock plus add-on for me.

Nancy: exactly what zeb said about stickies. The moderators usually put them there because they find the info within the sticky is of importance. !st time I've seen GW use them.

Kevin

It's like a company-wide memo from your company CEO. They don't 'go away' until the boss removes them. :)

Dave.

I have ad blocker but it doesn't deal with stickies. I am beginning to get annoyed by the current one. I can see the point of putting it up for a short while but I think everyone will have read it by now and it's getting counter productive. Maybe GW will realise this and remove it at some point.

It doesn't bother me, I just look at all the thread titles and when they've been posted to anyway. A note about ad-blocker. I'm all for it, but you might wish to add free sites that you frequent to your "white list". If they can't cover their costs with their income from the ads then bye-bye "free" part of free site. It just came up on another site I like very recently.

sunnibel - I do not object to the ads which come up in a side bar and they still appear. I can look at them or not as I wish. What I hate its the ones which are embedded in the text and start playing loud music, stupid sound effects or inane videos when the mouse passes over certain words. They are totally counter productive imo since they are completely untargeted and advertise products based solely on a keyword. They irritate me sufficiently to guarantee that I'll never buy those products. Adblocker is currently stopping 5 of them. GW has an opt out option but you need to do it every time you log on.

I give in to the stickeys! LOL It just seems like they should go away after awhile. Oh well. NT

Flora, maybe there is something intrinsic in my ipad that I don't know about, but I've never had an experience like what you describe on gardenweb. Anyway, don't get me wrong, I don't really like ads but see them as a sometimes necessary evil. :)

That's interesting that you don't get them on your iPad sunnibel. If you look at the bottom of this screen you will see 'Learn more about in-text links on this page here'.
What you see is certain words within posts in a different colour and if you are unfortunate enough to hover your cursor near them an ad fills the middle of the screen making it impossible to continue reading the post until you click the x to close it. Even then often clicking the x makes it continue and you have to click again elsewhere to really get rid of it. For example a post about garden 'clean' up will cause an ad about a floor polish to fill your screen. They have annoyed plenty of other people.

Here is a link that might be useful: In text ads.

One thing annoys me about this 'sticky':

1. That it is on every page of each forum, not just page one.

Actually two things annoy me about this 'sticky':

2. That it is essentially an advertisement, not relevant to the topic of each forum and certainly not an attempt to preserve some of the valuable information or sage wisdom that drops off beyond 'page 67' every day, or even to be helpful to newcomers.

Actually three things annoy me about this 'sticky':

3. That it is just a repeat of a link from the 'What's new' section an inch above it!