I'm always for keeping our Residents informed. I know Resis often ask on the forums and Live Help and other channels, hoping to know "it's not just me". I do too.

I wish, in a fantastic sort of way, it would be more easier—transparent, even—to see the process behind fixing problems like this. Sure, everyone knows the end results: "w00t teh grid is open again r0×0rz!!!!1", but the process—now that's a different story.

Early in my Second Life, I remember musings of "If the sandbox is gonna be wiped, we should see robots come and sweep it up! It should be more organic, not so sterile and blank!" Discomfort lies in that void. With avatar-to-avatar communication being such an essential aspect of SL for me, a term like gridmonkey—a developer on a weekly rotation helping to get downed sims up, remedy nasty crash bugs, and all that good schtuff—directly correlates with visual imagery.

Canya imagine: what a joy it'd be to see a big ape av, pounding his chest and lugging a crateful of bananas, pull out a giant MONKEY wrench and a spanner, and start banging away at the terrain until a region was back to full health+happiness.

I wish I could see this easier.

(Could resolving bugs be dramatized as a series of podcasts? Will more Lindens ever blog? Is there community demand for a big, poster-sized roadmap of SL's future, saying "This is where we're all going together!"?)