Back to the christhegoth bet-spreading discussion...
Everyone realizes that switching over to other pools is only going to exacerbate the variance problem, right? Honestly, the pigeon superstition is dangerous enough to sink a pool, especially one that's <1% of the network. Nearly a quarter of the pool's hashrate has fallen off in the past couple of days...
You're totally right that one person spouting off random ideas of "bet spreading" and switching between pools based on recent challenges can be just enough to make less informed people jump ship. It needs to stop.
At the end of the day, you're just as likely to be equally successful in any pool. The payment amounts and frequency change but you'll end up with a comparable amount at the end of the day where ever you mine. When you're choosing a pool you should be looking at the fees, available services and the ease with which you can run your gear on the pool. As far as I'm concerned, Bitminter gives me the best of all 3.
jumping to another pool is in my opinion just throwing away 10 good shift's and spending time to build good shift's at another!