Consistency of in world messages?

I have been having a horrible time today...TPs not working at all, getting the "downloading clothing" message, big packet loss - though I was not invisible, I also saw several other AVs who were only hair and prim skirts (they were obviously upset). I spoke with the former Live Help and they acknowledged they were aware (I believe it was Spike). My question is: when do you decide to do in-world alerts vs when you do not? I recall that most times there were major issues like these, it was announced.

Thanks in advance.

Hey Gillian,

Typically Char or Mick confer with the Devs and the Communications Monkey to determine if an issue is grid wide, just main or teen grid, and across what channels it should be communicated. Often that means an Announcement in the forums and a Blog posting. Sometimes for more acute problems, it also includes an inworld announcement and/or posting to the bulliten board system or the Message of the Day. Most of these info sources will point to the Blog, so that's always your best first source.

It's true that sometimes issues aren't quickly announced...a good example is a database issue that was causing failed TPs last week while I was on my CommMonkey shift. After 10-15 minutes of inworld diagnosis/and communication with Liaisons on the Request Help channel and another 10 talking with the GridMonkey and devs who were looking at the problem server-side, I created a blog post and was getting ready to post it when I got the all clear. So there was a short time when there were issues and there was no conclusive announcement. It's was a case of Grid Monkey beats CommMonkey.

The moral to the story? Monkeys are on the case...and you don't want to play monkey poker without bringing banana chips.

...?