I would allow the original poster to put up a notice that they've found someone/are looking through applicants, etc. Some people will be deluges with messages,

I would allow the original poster to put up a notice that they've found someone/are looking through applicants, etc. Some people will be deluges with messages, and just need some time to hit pause to get through all the responses. This way, you don't have people posting and not getting a response from the original poster who's moved on. Maybe implement a button the OP could click that shows up red next to the title on the main page, to let people know. Those posts slowly lose importance over time, and if the original poster doesn't end up meeting anyone that fits, they can hit the button again and the post becomes active again. *Edit: it would also have the advantage of removing irrelevant data. Once a site becomes popular, information overload is a problem. So if you knew someone was already chatting with someone, you wouldn't get frustrated looking through all the posts.