/improve/ - Self Improvement

We're talking a lot about improving ourselves, but what about improvement of the board as a whole? Let's discuss that. Specifically, I want to talk about stickies.

I get that having generals is good for building communities, but four stickies is way too many. That's over a quarter of front page real estate, so it better be worth it.

We have HabitRPG sticky. This is always the top of the stickies. It has a whopping 267 posts. It is positioned as the crown jewel of /improve/. Stickying it tells newcomers, "Get this thing". At the same time, with the sheer post numbers and involvement, it'll always be on the front page.

Next is /sig/. I'm honestly not sure what this is trying to be. This entire board is about self-improvement. It seems to be a modification of a 4/fit/ resource. That's fine and all, but it's far from well written and is a bit of a mess. It has references to 'image related' with no image attached, youtube links float without description and the whole thing reads a bit like a semi-copypasta'd pastebin.

The third sticky is a blog resource sticky without any blogs in the OP. We don't need two resource stickies; one is enough.

Finally, we have the rules thread. This can be summarised as 'SFW - No r8me - No Shitposting - Be Nice' in the announce bar. If you want to have a constitution-length set of rules, put in in 8ch.net/improve/rules.html and shove a link into the announce bar.

Let's consider when a sticky should be used over a regular thread. A sticky serves two functions: Containing discussion and drawing attention.

If it is for discussion, it acts to contain the topic to that thread, such as with /fem/'s 'ask women' topic. At present we do not have any topic of discussion flooding the board that needs containing, so we'll dismiss this function as relevant.

If it's to draw attention to a topic, the topic has to be one that warrants the attention, yet would otherwise not be posted in. The best example is an information sticky, like /fit/'s. Attached, for your convenience, is an image of 4/fit/'s sticky. Every single line is a link to another site, for easy updating. It's clearly laid out. It has no discussion and takes up little board real estate. A model sticky. Crucially, the board has no other stickies at all. Also attached is 8/fit/'s stickies. (Note that I expanded the second one.) They follow a similar rule, with the first one being used as an aggregation of self-contained infographics. In comparison, /improve/'s stickies are bloated and directionless, with much less information.

My suggestion? De-sticky all current stickies. Create a new 'sticky in-progress' sticky, for discussion about what resources the new sticky should contain. We then create an external webpage with different sections, such as a wiki. Ideally it should allow for anonymous participation and editing. The discussion sticky is then unstickied and a new sticky thread is created, this time only a locked single post. It has links to the different sections, with clear, concise explanations of what they are. For example, one of these sections would be an /improve/-approved blogs' section, linking to the wiki-page, which in turn has the list of blogs. Another would be a line describing HabitRPG with a link to an introduction. Little information should be stored in the sticky; it should all point off-site, so that the off-site sites can be updated, with the sticky remaining 'current'. If the sticky needs updated, the owner should edit, not reply, to it.