The stickied topics is a bit difficult to balance--we want things there that are important announcements (ie, the FAQ, the Fan Club annoucement, etc) so they're easy to find for newcomers. Others we want to sticky so they can be seen easily as well, like the Four Winds announcements, etc. Admittedly, they do take up a large-ish chunk of space.
As for the FAQ, it probably would be a good to at least link to that from the Episodes page, actually. Good idea.
Though re: confusion, on things like release dates and length and so forth, I doubt it would cut down too much on that. IMO, a lot of new visitors tend to post without looking around (not just here, this happens everywhere on the internet).