Point the first, fsck is now being provided by util-linux-ng.   Point
the second, it's not the behaviour of fsck which is at issue, but the
init scripts which are running fsck.   Traditionally, Linux systems run
fsck twice.  Once to check the root file system, and a second time to
check the the non-root file systems, and until fsck finished checking
all of the non-root file systems, the boot scripts would not continue
until all of the non-root file systems were finished being checked.

The init scripts in Karmic are apparently doing something else;
specifically, they are running fsck's in three different passes.   Once
for the root file system, once for the system partitions, and once (in
the background) for non-system partitions.   The details of how this is
getting done, I don't know, because it's being done outside of
e2fsprogs, but in the init scripts.

What I would hope is true is:

1)   Which partitions are considered "system partitions" and which are
not is configurable; it may very well be that for a particular web
server, the partition containing /www must be checked before the apache
daemons are started up, so /www should be considered a system partition.

2)  As much as possible, the non-system file systems are being checked
in parallel, if the partitions are located on different spindles so
checks can happen as quickly as possible.

As far as whether the user has the authority to skip the file system
consistency check of a particular partition, that should be a policy
decision set by the system administrator.  In some cases, the system
administrator may not want a random user to be able to cause a file
system consistency check to be skipped.   It may also be a good idea to
distinguish between the case where the file system is flagged as having
errors, and so the file system check is highly advisable in order to
prevent data loss, versus a periodic check done because the file system
hasn't been checked in a while.

These are all policy questions above e2fsprogs, though.  And I suspect
some of these may be considered wishlist items as opposed to high
priority bugs.

-- 
Automatic fsck leaves partition inaccessible without any notification.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/447816
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