I like your first idea, but if fearless leader were to go with the second, I wouldn't want to make the user feel judged. Perhaps a kindler-gentler message could be displayed, like, "You post is very important to us, it will be handled in the order that they are received", or maybe, "Thanks for posting to Perl Monks... your node will created shortly."

By the way, as a monk who gets the moderation box for new nodes, I can only place a node on the gates and or in its categorized page. Its still visable on the newest nodes page, and I can't delete it. I can't mark it with something telling other moderators that I looked at it and didn't think it gate worthy. This means that as a 'moderator' there isn't really much that I can do. It only takes one moderator to think a post is gate worthy for it to be posted to the gates. You see?