Yeah, it's currently 05:31 in Japan.
So Mark's probably sleeping.
However, I have some viewpoints:
1. Mark need to trust 1 or two others to have admin access to MtGox. What if he gets hit by a bus ? Where's the backup solution ?
2. As MtGox is the biggest exchange, they should take great care to monitor all systems 24/7, if not they lose business, and trust is eroded.
3. There's a lot of businesses depending on MtGox being available, and therefore point 2.) is extra important.
MtGox has already clearly shown that they are not good at communication with the customers and PR work overall, so they should actually get help from somebody that is good at this.
In the end, I don't think there's anything to worry about, once Mark gets back, he'll probably kick all in working order again.
HOWEVER, this is simply not good enough in the corporate world of today. When Gox decided to run their exchange 24/7, that's also what they need to do in a serious way, then 'glitches' are not acceptable. And if it occurs, it should be fixed, and the community should get an honest and candid explanation of what happend, and it should not happen again.
If I were Mark, I'd let external experts review the code base to avoid future "glitches" and also have a financial audit of MtGox to regain trust in the community.
I have no doubt that Mark believes in bitcoin and work hard to make MtGox a good exchange, but he needs to see his own limitations, and to delegate work, he can't do it all himself.
Because of all the unrest these days (delayed payments etc), personally I don't hold any funds at MtGox, be it USD or BTC at the moment.
I would love to see MtGox succeed, but they have to up their game, as other professional players WILL move into this market.
One thing that I absolutely would love to see was better follow up of withdrawals. Customers actually invest their funds, and this is money that the customers own. When withdrawals take 30 days or more, these monies are being held 'hostage' and the customers needs to be notified about the status of their withdrawal in a much better way.
There should be absolutely no need for any customers coming running to this forum to resolve a withdrawal request.
Many people are too proud to admit to weaknesses and problems. IF there's USD liquidity problems at Gox, which many customers seems to believe, then it would be better if MtGox was honest about it, and told the community about the current situation, and made a plan to get out of that situation, perhaps raising fees temporarily and doing other measures to balance the books.
If it is so that only the customers that complains the loudest are the ones getting their cases solved, so that the Gox crew can avoid the fire, while the rest who wait in patience are the ones having to endure the painful waiting of their funds, it is a very unfortunate situation and while Gox is perhaps scared of telling how the situation is, perhaps they're afraid of losing customers. Not telling how things really is, could backfire pretty hard in the end. As we all know, the road to "hell" is paved with good intentions.
It's also very dangerous not to care about the customers, because once there are viable alternatives, customers will move to other exchanges. Being biggest today, doesn't mean you'll stay biggest forever.
Swift handling of customer funds is the single most important thing.
I've been away for several months and was expecting better. The BTC economy needs quality service from it's leading exchange.