Why won't LL consider limiting new sign ups?

As we near the 2 million member mark and the system becomes more and more unstable (ie...basic functionality like FIND not working), at what point does it become bad enough that you will stop or at least throttle new signups in favor of servicing your existing customers? If the system cannot handle the current number of users it has, what sense is there in continuing to allow an endless number of new users to stream into a rapidly failing system? It won't help with retention as their experience will be horrible anyway. I know it is not desireable to turn people away who want to join, but which is more important - unmanaged growth or system stability and providing service to your existing (paying) customers?

Hi Ano, I've been biting my teeth numerous times over the last days and hoping in the middle of the night that the database doesn't topple us all over. It's disturbing to me both personally and professionally, and over the weekend, our engineers have been reeevaluating what we need to do to improve growth for the longterm.

(I remember my own entrance into Second Life was smooth, in 1.5.3, but followed what I was told was a "disastrous update to 1.5". Having update days be dreaded SUCKS.)

Of course, that's not seen openly, and that's been a historical big problem, Residents not knowing what we're up to... so I've also forwarded Resident requests that Cory Linden, CTO of Linden Lab, do a Town Hall explaining further on future scalability, database load issues, the possibility of limiting signups, etc. — I'll make sure your voice is counted in that too.

Another connected thing is, of course scaling support, you've probably read Changes Coming to Customer Service — but for anyone who hasn't, I'd recommend it. Especially for everyone who knows how much of a firestorm our regular Support channels were over the weekend.