Re: General ordering questions....
Hi nilbog,
The articles plugin is on PluginArticleIncludes wiki page, I think thats its name anyway, search for Articles in Search WIki PageName if it doesnt link you.
I was going to suggest the best way to get a sticky article would be to update its creation date each time the page loads, but I'm unsure of your coding skills. Thats one solution anyway! You can always give me a shout and i'll post some code to do this for you
I found most listings are shown in reverse order Z-A not A-Z, Im not sure on any settings here, however, I'll look into it.
Hope we can get you sorted out 
Take care
Damian
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