blocks

http://drupal.org/node/92630 - THIS one is the biggest usability issue I've come across and we have a great simple fix, just needs some momentum behind it and needs it fast! It's got Steven's stamp of approval but needs some more voices.

http://drupal.org/node/104763 - Define page and story in default.profile. This patch also changes page's workflow to not promote to front page and have comments disabled.

According to my devel module logs and lots of watching the query lists, the query that costs us the most in all of Drupal core is this one:

SELECT DISTINCT b.* FROM blocks b LEFT JOIN blocks_roles r ON b.module = r.module AND b.delta = r.delta WHERE b.theme = S AND b.status = D

Let the brainstorming begin; what can we do to improve it? Are there enough indexes? Can we avoid the DISTINCT? Are there other options?