I'm looking at the main page that the request comes from a great plugin Advanced Feature Questions. As it can reduce the load to optimize the query to the database.
SELECT qa_posts.postid, qa_posts.title, qa_posts.content, qa_posts.format, qa_posts.userid,
qa_users.userid, qa_users.email, qa_users.handle, qa_users.avatarblobid, qa_users.avatarwidth, qa_users.avatarheight, qa_users.flags
FROM qa_posts
LEFT OUTER JOIN qa_users ON (
qa_posts.userid = qa_users.userid
)
WHERE qa_posts.featured=1
ORDER BY qa_posts.created DESC
LIMIT 5;
264.46 ms - 5 rows - 12 columns