You'll have to create your own permalinks (as openstreetmap.org does) or hack OpenLayers (like informationfreeway,org does) if you want to use the standard OpenLayers PermaLink control.

The next OpenLayers release will support reprojection which will fix this properly.

That's normal - there are always some broken bits of shoreline that cause errors like that. You should still find that most of it has imported, or I did at least.

The planet is loaded once or twice a week, but there is no global rerendering done - tiles are only queued for rerendering as a result of them being viewed. A summary of how it works can be seen at:

osm.wiki/index.php/Slippy_Map#Mapnik_tile_rendering

There is an additional delay at the moment as all rendering has been stopped for a few days while we transition to a new tile rendering/delivery system - during the period all the existing tiles are being rerendered using the new system but until that is complete you will be seeing the old tiles.

You can upload multiple files at once - just zip or tar them up into an archive and upload that. It will appear as one track if you do that though.

Alternatively, use one of the bulk upload tools in the svn repository to upload the tracks.

That's not true - we have always recorded history. Way history was wiped when segments were dropped though. I don't think the node history was though. What is new is the ability to see (and rollback) objects in Potlatch.