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> 2) The number of 'sysop's is rapidly rising, and the chances of
> somebody accidentally (or maliciously) performing a slow, complex
> query that tied up the database for a long time would increase.

It's pretty hard to do that with a SELECT, and it's only temporary.  
I think it's handly for sysops to be able to find things out like how 
many users use a certain skin, how many page titles contain a certain 
word, etc., without having to provide special pages for every 
possible query.