interesting article in the Guardian about a guy doing a PHD on Second Life. Snippet below…..
Real life crashes into Second Life’s digital idyll

Aleks Krotoski
Thursday November 30, 2006

It was three weeks ago that my virtual world disintegrated. I had been struggling with a digital littering problem in my Social Simulation Research Lab and I wanted to automate the cleanup process. As the home of my PhD research is the virtual world of Second Life, I need to ensure that my online space looks professional and tidy so any potential participants who visit will instantly recognise my good intentions. I’d spent days lining up little planks of wood, straightening out the interactive books on the shelves and placing the windows just so. All that I needed to do, I was assured, was flick a little switch and foreign objects would be removed. I flicked. Then everything disappeared…….