Calm down.  Maybe you don't understand. You don't need to wade through 500 messages, Just click the Mark All as Read link. 

How can you just read  the the 50 new ones first if I change something during this Sysop testing phase? Just read new in each section. Then mark all as read. Keep in mind this is not something regular users will go through. You are only seeing these sudden load of new messages because I am experimenting with various code options.

I think the code is pretty well set now, so you probably won't see the large batch of new messages again anyway.... and if you do just read new for each section and then mark all as read.