There are several maintenance scripts waiting to be run on many wikis
since years ago:
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/showdependencytree.cgi?id=29782&hide_res…
The biggest offenders are:
*
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16112 which breaks tons
of special pages;
*
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=33253 which makes the
article count on those wikis completely broken after the count method
change.
The fact that we could/should find a perfect and permanent solution for
those problems doesn't mean that we shouldn't improve the situation
given that we can.
The fact that we can't run them every month as we once did doesn't mean
that we shouldn't run them say every 5 years (which would be an
improvement) or after big changes (such as the count method).
Even the longest scripts of that sort, when run by pdhanda some months
ago, took only some days for all wikis and didn't do any damage.
Nemo