Got it bookmarked. Thanks again Nick, for a super job!
Looks good Nick.
One other thought that came to me was that when a user believes his/her question has been answered that they could mark the topic as being 'SOLVED', by editing the heading of their first post. Maybe for section 14 in your list.
This will help both people who are offering advice, but also other people with a similar problem to clearly see the state of the topic.
It also displays some respect from the original poster that the help received has been helpful.
Thoughts?
Paul
Good idea, I forgot about that. Added that point to the end of things to do when you have a response.
When we encounter posts from people who have obviously not read the sticky first do we -leave it/report it- to moderators so they can inform them or reply ourselves?
I wouldn't bother reporting it. Just reply yourself, link to the sticky, and maybe mention "check point 3" or whatever.
They won't all read it, but this saves you a bit of typing.
I've been doing some of this. If enough folks do, I think it's the best way to capitalize on the work that went into the sticky.
Nick, one wee suggestion. Can the sticky be broken into sections that can be referred to from within an URL? I don't know the name of what I'm thinking of but instead of telling a user to "read section 7 of http://...../" you can say
read http://....../#7
which takes them directly to section 7 - which seems to be the section most new users really need to read 
Pete
The name is an "anchor", but I'm not sure you can make a link to part of a post.
If I break the post into three parts (initial and two replies) rather than two parts, you can make a link to an individual reply.
Maybe it's there, let me experiment:
foo
Try this:
The final post on that page now lists all the anchors:
Excellent. Thanks Nick.
Pete
i must admit, i never read any of that stuff, which is why on my very first post on this forum i did all the wrong things, of which i will apologize for. i also made some jokes in one of the topics someone started about people demanding to be shown how to make an led blink, lol. someone pm'ed to see if i was kidding, i assure you, i was. again, apologies for that. morale of reply? new guys, follow the tips and rules here, noone has to help you, they do on their own free time.