Add a new field to each board, where the moderator can select "Market" or "Non-Market", and have Matt oversee that so it doesn't get abused
Yep. Had to double-check to make sure I didn't say "Message", when I meant "Board". I got it right the first time, which is surprising for me.
Yes, anything having to do with the Message table is real expensive. I try to limit my use of it.
Which is also why I'm not using SQL's built-in message-text indexing. I ran it the other night to build a catalog and it took about an hour (for 250k posts) and the whole site crawled while it was doing it. And a lot of things can happen to trigger that whole rebuild.
Besides, rolling my own is more fun. :) Although it throws away my "It's Microsoft's fault" card.
Regarding Shadkin, I'd give my eye teeth to get him over here. He isn't a prolific writer (on SI), but he's just as brilliant as they come.