Sticky Question

Hope you don't mind my asking a question that's probably already been answered. This is about a sticky's administrator -

-- Who determines what goes into a sticky?

-- How easy is it to change the manager of the sticky? Could the forum rotate management of the sticky among its members?

Thanks in advance for an answer,
Karen

Can you give me a link to an example?

Terry, thanks for answering. There's a sticky in the works for the morning glory forum that we are trying to get to a point where we can ask DG admin to stick it up front - so the sticky does not exist yet.

I'm just wondering if there is a standard answer to my question about stickies in general.

I was hoping in the lily forum to get a sticky on seed starting and scaling. The questions come up often and there are threads on forum that would be great stickies for newbies with questions, as I feel I can't do them justice, but rather refer them to these threads. How would we go about doing that? Can they be threads?

Magnolia, I've been saving threads and individual posts (great for focusing on subject when thread goes off topic) to my favorites and indexing them like you would an index for a book. My plan is to post an index with links to relevant threads & posts following each entry.

Here's an example showing how a few entries would be treated in a sticky for the MG forum:

Germination
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/p.php?pid=3303432

Harvesting Pods
a) Pods are ready when: http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/p.php?pid=3560541
b) For very valuable seeds, following is Gourd's technique to ensure no losses to shattering of pods: http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/p.php?pid=4017486

Identification
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/p.php?pid=3504567

Pollination
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/p.php?pid=3858430

Magnolia, for purposes of the sticky, you can see there's some cleaning up to do in the above. I'm just giving an example. We certainly hope for a period of time after the sticky is up for the opportunity to refine and augment the basics with which we begin - we certainly want forum members' feedback for that, as well.

In addition to the index above, we're thinking about a section for FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions). All of the above would have only internal DG links.

So, we also intend to have another separate section for outside links that are extremely germaine to morning glories.

Well, that's just what the MG forum is up to. Have you looked at other forums' stickies? The Daylily Forum has a good one. If I ever get through this one, I sure would like to tackle one for the Sustainability Forum (or enable a potential do-er there).

Hope this helps,
Karen

oops - edited to alphabetize the entries

This message was edited Oct 17, 2007 12:18 PM

On a related subject, the winter sowing forum has four stickies with 750 posts and climbing! I'd like to see the "sticky" info distilled down to a few paragraphs, or a few pages - it's really too much to wade through to find the info to get started winter sowing.

Claypa, that's why I think the indexing method is so useful. Everyone can talk away on the threads, but only the link to a thread shows up on the sticky under its subject heading.

For sub-subjects, as in the Harvesting Pods entry, I'll distill the subject into a short description using non-complex language. If the subject has been treated in an especially complex, technical fashion, I'll write a short intro that covers the basic points in non-complex language. I really think that the sticky is where educational value becomes available to all - but it's gotta be really concise.

Magnolia, in case you are where I was before joining DG with respect to how to use the computer and internet (which was practically zero), here's how I get links for threads and posts into a post -

For a thread:
1) Put your cursor into the bar at the top where it says Address, so that the cursor makes an arrow.
2) Left click the address bar so that it's highlighted.
3) Hit Control + c, with Control just slightly before C, but practically together.
4) Next, take your cursor to where you want the link to appear and hit Control + v in the same way. Your link will show up something like this: http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/778837/ . You'll see a lot of stuff, but once you hit Preview or Send, it will be highlighted showing it's a live link. Fortunately for us, Dave has fixed it so links we copy have a better chance of working on DG.

For a post:

1) In the post that you want, there's a Post# in the left box under the poster's DG moniker. Right-click on that.
2) A menu will come up. Click on where it says "Copy Shortcut".
3) Take your cursor over to where you want that link to appear, and hit Control + v as above. Same thing goes for a link to a post as for a thread, as above. http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/p.php?pid=4075285

Suppose you want to post your sticky either to Terry to go at the beginning of a forum or to other members for their feedback, the best way to do this is to copy the link as above to whatever you've come up with so far. This way, the links you've collected will come up as live links. They won't, if you copy your work with Control + c and paste it with Control + v. You need to do it by copying & pasting the address bar of whatever you typed in.

Claypa, whoever takes on the distillation of all that material for the WS forum will need some time to do it. I am a horrible procastinator, and fortunately for the MG forum, Beckygardener wants a sticky up there yesterday. I hope she'll understand how much time that takes. Although, since I've already organized much of the material, I don't think the job for MGs will be as hairy as that for the wintersowing forum - lol.

Anyone feel free to correct me. Thank you DG Computer & Dave's Garden forums and Gardenwife & Darius for making dents in my computer fog.

There are a couple approaches to stickies.

One approach is when a member who is passionate, knowledgeable and dedicated tackles a particular subject and develops a comprehensive thread, and it gets stickied. It may be left open for additional posts, or "locked" so no one can add to it (the thread-starter contacts us occasionally to unlock it so they can edit/add to it.) The Plumeria forum's sticky thread is a good example of that approach.

Another approach is found in the daylilies forum, where I tried to pull together links to the various resources within DG and created a sticky thread to help people readily locate Hem information within PlantFiles, the Bookworm, PlantScout, etc. Members can "nominate" their favorite daylily forum threads to be linked from that thread.

I'll have to see what I can do. It would be so helpful to have on Lily Forum. Thank you!

Thanks Terry. I think everyone in the MG forum would like a sticky that is focused and easy to find things in, as opposed to being so bulky and rambling that it's too confusing to use. But, on the other hand, in order to satisfy both those who want something up there yesterday and those concerned with quality, locking it so that only occasional changes can be made after the expedient quicky gets stickied poses a dilemma - a lot of hard work by long-time, major contributors could get lost in the shuffle, which I think would be an awful shame.

Well, wish me luck in bridging both sides of this sticky thing while getting in my harvest.

Karen

Hey, Terry,
Just a head's up. The Vermicomposting folks are about to ask for a sticky, too...

If the forum has a thread ready to sticky, I can easily make that happen - members can use this forum or the "Contact Us" link to give us the information and a link to the thread.

Thank you Karen for addressing this topic and all the info you are providing. For those of us who are "computer challenged" it can be hugely intimidating. So thanks again for taking some of the mystery out of stickies :-)