How do I pin an important topic to the top of a space?

One caveat for larger communities: keep an eye on the indexes. At a few thousand rows the difference is night and day.

Great point. I had not considered the angle you raised in the second paragraph — it reframes the whole thing for me.

One caveat for larger communities: keep an eye on the indexes. At a few thousand rows the difference is night and day.

Tried this on a staging copy first and it behaved exactly as described. Confident enough to roll it to production now.

This is the answer I wish I had found six months ago. Would have saved me a weekend of trial and error.

Solid breakdown. The only thing I would add is to back up before making the change — better safe than sorry.