Don't load admin dashboard widgets if they're not shown

[ComputerGuru]

I'm not sure how doable this is given that #23910 was closed, but some plugins load slow admin dashboard widgets that use HTTP API requests or else involve heavy db lookups and processing. (Yes, these plugins should be designed better.)

Since this is the admin dashboard and not some other component that is heavily modified and reconfigured such as the post page and since #23910 was closed, would it be possible to require a page reload when an admin component is enabled (so that the page can be re-requested while calling the widget routine) instead of preloading all widgets and then simply hiding the unshown dashboard elements?

Or perhaps #23910 could be revisited with consideration given to non-stock admin dashboard widgets that are not as "no big deal" as the ones that WP ships with out of the box.

[valentinbora]

Thanks @ComputerGuru for the ticket and sorry for the long delay.

As far as I am concerned, Core could enforce a different paradigm here but it's more likely that plugins should do a better job at being lighter-weight and loading actual information via Ajax.

I'd like to further encourage Core folks to chime in with insights and opinions here in order to reach consensus.

[swissspidy]

Agreed with the above. There could be back compat issues with this approach too.

Given the impeding admin redesign I wouldn't focus on such an undertaking.