editorial flow is a plugin maintained by automattic, and I assume that it is being used on VIP. For anything less then a major newspaper I really don't see the point of having more then contibutor->editor flow. main problem is images, but if you don't trust the contributors on that level then you are probably doomed in any case
I guess that staging is not backuped as well as production, so it is more likely to go down, taking with it work over 300 pages