Resource leveling in a project..a useful task or a pain in the ass

The past few days have been extremely frustrating as I am trying to fix and plan my resources in a 400+ task with numerous swim wires connecting them. Managing resources in MS project is not a simple task. You can put in the names but when it comes to leveling them to the respective capacities, you have to go through a lot of pain and trust me the tool which MS project provides for auto leveling messes up the project big time..so should we put effort in leveling resources in detail? considering most project plans are never followed as they are made. What I believe is that we should do resource leveling!! but not in depth to the lowest detail. A more high level for the core team should be good enough so that the PM is aware of the challenges he/she might face in executing the phases. The rest should be left when the task is about to be started. Its as simple as following the thumb rule..." don't cross the bridge until you have reached it..but do figure out where the bridges are"

Setting up a project networking site

Updating stakeholders or team members on the status of a project is an important task for a PM. I have seen numerous PMs adding a recurring task in there project plan (MS project of course) on sending weekly emails or reports to the relevant team members. Thinking of this, the age we are living in is of collaboration, with every hooked to Facebook, Twitter and other networking sites. So why don't we have a collaboration/networking/wiki for our projects? Their are numerous tools on the Internet like wordpress or Google Sites that let you set up collaboration sites in a Giffy by which team members can keep track on anouncements, project calendar, events and other goofy things that are happening.