Save and restore the value of this parameter so that after this code is run the CGI parameters are as the user requested.

Done

Perhaps a worse problem is that we have tons of never-used user pages and the way scratchpads were implemented means that any time anyone visits one of these pages a blank and useless scratchpad is created. It'd be wise to avoid creating a node for any scratchpad that is empty (but don't delete a scratchpad node just because it is empty).

This is fixed, with an additional benefit that the scratchpad viewer now reuses the same code as the scratchpad edit|display pages. But at the (temporary) cost that View links on homenodes will be displayed regardless of status. This can/will be fixed, but the unecessary creation was higher priority I thought. Now a scratchpad will only be created if someone actually tries to view it. If you link to a user who doesnt have a scratchpad the link resolves to the Scratchpad Viewer which if followed will cause the creation of the node. If one does exist then it resolves to it directly. The always show the link is because I didnt have time to determine the privacy regardless of the existance of the new style node and i didnt want to force the creation of a new node just by viewing a homenode.