Quote: "Ironically, it is also forbidden to tell somebody to "read the stickies". So instead I'm going to strongly imply that it might be helpful to read them, to avoid future mishaps.
"
No that's not correct... Please DO refer people to reading the stickies... What is frowned upon is having people just type "read the stickies" or "read the manual" or simply "Search" as a reply to someone's thread... If you said something like "What you have asked about is explained in a sticky [insert link here]... hope that helps" or even if someone explained how to use the search function, then no moderator action would be needed... these 'read the
blah' type replies, which offer nothing else, are what cause new users to feel alienated and get people angry which results in flame wars...
It's not what you say, it's how you say it