Thanks for looking out for the site Scob! It's nice to know that people care!
I can agree with both sides here. It is a waste of space, but it is also easy to skip past. A sticky would be ignored for sure, as most of them are anyhow.
I like the suggestion of a chat thread that people can subscribe to. This would have the extra benefit of notifying people even when they're not on the site as well.
Not sure one solution is better than the other, so we'll leave it as is for now. Of course if anyone has more creative ideas, just post them!
MT