[admin (no pm's please)]

One issue you may have with search engines is that page ranks dissipates at every level from the initial link. Hence you may have an exceptionally good sticky article in a forum. But if you spend your SEO time simple getting links to the top level of your forum, then the "good" article will be two levels down when it comes to indexing.

A better approach might be to target a main sticky and ensure that the sticky has links to other strong articles on your forum.