Status vs lack of customer service

I have to say that LL certainly did not gain any sympathy from me today regardless of thei rbusiness/hardware problems.

I have no problem with a maintenance period that is announced.
I have no problem with a downtime to update serverside software - provided it is announced.
I even seldom have problems with mandating a clientside software upgrade...this last little fiasco we call 1.5 being a very notable exception due to the apparent lack of prerelease testing.

However, today, at 5:30PM Central US time, the status webpage still says"
"Second Life is closed for maintainence. We will be back online by 10:00AM PDT."
Now, unless this is a new message, I am not expecting SL to be down until Thursday morning.

I got back inworld around 1PM PDT today for a while and then left .. when I came back, it was down. Check the status page.. you see the message I read.

I check the forums.. one blurb about a problem in the Announcements forum... no real "it's up now/dpwn now" status report.

If someone has the time to make a forum post, it's no mmore than 15 secs more to add a date to the status web page to clarify something there... I know the status page has been the target of dissatisfaction before.. but some seven hours late on updating it? That is simply inexcusable.

Someone else has suggested we be compensated for all of the recent system downtime. Personally, I think we should be paid for being used as sado-masochistic dummies by LL. We are essentially testing their software for them, not being informed about the status of the site - web or game - and I personally feel ignored in terms of customer service responses to bug reports, emails and other comments concerning this place/operations by LL. I am seriously beginning to regret my payment of the annual subscription fee. I am beginning to question whether I should renew that subscription even as a premium monthly account with a much lower tier than I have now... I am no longer sure the angst this place causes me is worth it...

edited to add: just as soon as I posted this, the status page was updated to say the game might be back by 6PM PDT. Whoopie.

It has become a bit tiresome today, indeed. I understand the need for downtime in order to repair things. It's a part of life when dealing with online communities. Extending downtime to ensure full usability helps all of us in the long run and isn't that big of a deal. It certainly has cancelled plenty of events I'd planned on going to today, but there'll be other events at other times. We'll live! The only issue I have is that the database was lost due to a miscalculated risk that was taken in an attempt to rush the job. Technical engineers should know to put safety and redundancy before anything else. Cutting corners and taking risks that they -know- exist is irresponsible. Given that they have no deadlines to meet (that I'm aware of), the loss of data is generally inexcusable. They're sorry that it happened, and I hold no grudges against Linden Labs for the failure. It was an honest mistake they hadn't planned on. I'm sure nobody's jumping for joy that the database was lost earlier today, be it user or developer. However when risks are taken with the userbase in order to rush a job, everybody suffers. These sort of risks shouldn't be taken, plain and simple. I'd rather have to wait another several hours just to have the job done right. Perhaps even the rest of the day if necessary! Whatever it takes. When downtimes occur and last longer than originally projected, we all deal with it. In all honesty I'd rather have things be done right than quickly. Unfortunately for me, I logged on during the "lost" period of time and edited, updated, and added new features to a script of mine. This is now lost to the wind. I can and will try to recreate the changes when I next log on but I find it to be frustrating that an entire database was lost, causing countless other users to face the same losses. Reimbursement would be nice for those that lost valuable time and energy put into creations, but I don't feel it to be very likely. Besides, you can't really put a price on creations lost which you've prided yourself in constructing. I'm not angry with the Lindens for the mistake and I hope those reading this will feel similarly. It was just that, a mistake. But I certainly hope they learn from the mistake and no longer sacrifice safety for speediness.