Rich, I don’t think that plugins are to be blamed this time. Every version of WordPress before this one had no problems dealing with even 50 dedicated settings pages.

I think that a centralized settings page would have been a good idea also in every previous version of WordPress. The fact, though, is that previously it would have been simply a nice feature, while now it is required to solve a huge usability problem.

I have been following the discussion on wp-hackers list about how to consolidate plugin settings, but I don’t think it will solve the original problem.

Some plugins will require dedicated settings pages and the question will then be — how many such additional menu items are required to make the navigation unusable again.