Two points you might consider:
1. I believe the server is running more smoothly than it has since 1.4 (I think this was the version when I joined SMP). The occasional block lag and being temporarily disconnected has never been an issue to me nor many of the other members of the server. Most people I've found who are having buggy issues (myself included) will simply disconnect and reconnect, and it only takes a few seconds to do. But that's besides the point. Since moving to a dedicated machine with more RAM the server has been more than playable.
2. I'm not sure if you've ever tried this but I ran both a vanilla MC server and a Bukkit MC server on my local machine and network. I was trying to learn how Joe and the team do it and how the plugins operate. It was just myself logged in and using a localhost connection. Let me inform you that I still had block lag and the same errors as Noobscraft, with and without Bukkit plugins. This was also on my network machine with good specs hooked directly to my client! The point I'm trying to make here is that the SMP software code has a lot of flaws, which are well known and documented. A lot of them have nothing to do with the plugins installed, they are just inherent to the code of SMP itself. I've said it a few times before, but we are enjoying a game that is in Beta. There will be a few bugs that affect gameplay, and we are testing said bugs.
To summarize, I don't feel that the server needs to be taken offline for any amount of time in excess of what is needed to keep it running. The goal right now is to keep building on the list of trustworthy players we have so the serer can continue to grow. In some ninety(ish) days, Minecraft Version 1.0 will be released. And even then, being that it's whole purpose is to be a sandbox game, there will be additions and bugs that will eventually be fixed too. Notch also seems serious this time that Beta 1.8 will have official modding support, which means a new API and SDK that I'm sure Bukkit will migrate to making the plugins all that much more reliable.
And please, Justin, do not take my words with any hostility. In fact, if you disagree, I encourage you to disregard them. Just sharing my experiences with you and anyone else who feels like reading them. Either way, I suggest you look forward to the future of this game. That's why we're all here