Ehhh... the ratio of "bump in the night" problems that affect just me to genuine outages that cross regions and affect others is about 1:1, and then about 1 in

Ehhh... the ratio of "bump in the night" problems that affect just me to genuine outages that cross regions and affect others is about 1:1, and then about 1 in 4 or 5 of the cross-region problems blow up to the scale where they feel forced to update the dashboard. So I disagree, I think a canary flock would be both meaningful and useful. As you point out, though, the status dashboard isn't truly meant to be either of those things. I don't have any illusions about it ever changing.