The how about doing it different. AFAIK for every forum software there are functions to send some sort of initial private message to new accounts. Use it and include links to good sticky posts and wiki pages. At least that is what I do on my forums. Sadly, I can tell you that this will not result in less people asking for information which is posted in sticky threads. I have tried that on my boards to give new users some sort of info mail with all they need, but it didn't change a bit. Most people just delete the message instead of reading. That's on a board with some 20k concurrent users each day.