svmode=xml will eventually do what you ask. But currently it doesnt. :-(

For the record the issue here is a change that I made to castaways work. Originally simply by linking to a scratchpad for a user would cause the scratchpad node to be created. This meant that anytime a user visited a homepage of a user who had never used their scratch pad the users pad would be created. This is suboptimal in that it means that numerous scratchpad were/could be created that never would be used.

The new mechanism only creates a scratchpad object if somebody actually views/follows the link. If a scratchpad hasnt been created then the link will be to the Scratch Pad Viewer for that user. If someone follows that link then by the act of viewing it the object will be created. Following the pads creation links to the scratchpad will go directly to the relevent object and bypass the SPV.

So the SPV should always act as a proxy to the real scratchpads. The fact it doesnt WRT xml is due to the speed with which the original patches were rolled out and the lack of speed in pmdev (in this case me more or less) clearing the nits.