I question whether this is actually useful.

Most of the forums seem to have pretty straightforward rules. The ones that don't (e.g. Suggestions, QAS, etc.) can just be figured out over time. What I did when I first started foruming was making mistakes. And that was fine. Users corrected me and helped me along the way. It's because of this that I was able to catch onto forum etiquette very, very quickly. I read the Suggestions stickies at my own leisure until I was familiar with all of the rules. And honestly, I still haven't read all of the QAS stickies, but you could still argue I'm a fairly helpful QAS user. That's just because I made mistakes and learned from them, and that's my preferred method of doing things.

The time I joined the forums was also a bit of a Forum Revolution of sorts. Forum etiquette was rapidly expanding in such a short period of time. This was around the time when “support” posts were starting to be frowned upon, and constructiveness was becoming a big deal. This was the time when “I don't know, use Contact Us” posts were starting to be frowned upon as well. Oh, and we can't forget about the major mass reporting issue that got hundreds of users complaining in QAS about mass reports, and even a popular Scratcher got into a big argument with some of the forumers. But that's a story for another day. What I'm getting at is that people were starting to learn from their mistakes and change. This became widespread across the forums because tons of users were on the forums during quarantine, and eventually we realized a lot of things we did were wrong.

With this suggestion, you're suggesting the colors will make people more likely to read them. What I think will actually happen is that this will probably confuse new users. If they ask on QAS why there are mint green topics at the top of every subforum, and they learn it's to get people to read all the stickies, then this will just shy away new forumers – and potentially new forum helpers that could seriously help users for a while.

I genuinely think this suggestion, if it became a new feature, would hurt the forum community in the long run. If you see users making mistakes on the forums, let them make the mistake and let them learn from it. If they post a duplicate, explain what a duplicate is. If they post a rejected suggestion, just explain why you can't post rejected suggestions. That's the most effective way for forum education

Elijah999999 wrote:

A good and non-intrusive way of getting attention, but I'd prefer something that hurts my eyes a bit less. Perhaps light-purple?

Please no more purple

Prince_Wolf1 wrote:

(#42)

Elijah999999 wrote:

A good and non-intrusive way of getting attention, but I'd prefer something that hurts my eyes a bit less. Perhaps light-purple?

Please no more purple

This isn't about the purple color, so I am confused. This is suggesting about highlighting for topics on the forums.

Also, if there is going to be other color options, then it would be optional (not sure if that will really happen though).