A sticky topic doesn't prevent misplaced posts but they do help users posting in the right places.

Sticky topics also help moderators and other experienced users willing to help, that can simply post a link instead of having to write the same explanations again and again.

A sticky topic takes 10 lines or less, so it's not really worth discussing them in 10 posts or more.

If you are going with the bumping-is-OK approach you should also give the TS (topicstarter) certain responsibilities. The first post is very important, and if it is bad (e.g. speculative) this yields a bad thread without allowing to create another one.

The TS should also not be able to remove his post thereby deleting the whole thread. Instead in the case TS wants FP (first post) to be removed she should contact a moderator who can then transfer relevant information into whatever becomes then the FP.

Because you are going to reuse a thread, the FP should be updateable by moderators reflecting the current state of affairs. Many people will not read the whole thread, instead only reading the first few posts. If the FP is a summary of the whole thread this improves forum quality by huge leaps. However, this also requires good moderators; both pragmatic and aiming for informative, as well as putting time and effort in summarizing. Compare it to a post containing a howto. You'd update that too as soon as there is updates for it.

I agree with allnameswereout's comments but for many posts it seems unlikely that the TS will be willing to keep his FP updated and may never even realize that it has been bumped and needs to be updated. Asking the moderators to do this might make it more likely to happen but it could be an unmanageable job. I show over a page of modified posts in the N900 forum alone.

One thing that would be useful before bumping a topic is to define the bounds of a topic. For example, I would suggest that topics which refer to existing software should be restricted by version number. If I'm running Maemo-ABC v2.5.1, it might be of historic interest that v1.4.9 crashed if you went into offline mode but if it's not happening in the current version I don't really care. Questions, problems, comments, and suggestions tend to be version specific.

Hey, do you mind keeping this topic on topic? It's about writing sticky drafts for forums missing them.

If you volunteer drafting one, great. If not please discuss elsewhere. Thank you!