How to make sticky articles show up first in a list of articles?
Enable of the "sticky" option within publishing options (for 1 or more nodes) is only part of the solution: within the "Sort criteria" of your view, you also have to add  "Node: Sticky" as your primary sort criterium (using the Views UI).

When adding this sort criterium to your view, you'll also see "...To list sticky nodes first, set this to descending." (which is what you seem to be looking for).