Maxwell Graf tipped me off to this important new call on the Second Life JIRA:
SURVEY: vote here if you’d prefer for LL to work on mesh import over improving existing prim modeling tools
Max says: “This is an official SL inquiry into the use of something that will be much better for Second Life performance, and much better for building complex shapes inside Second Life. Basically, it will be the ability to allow the import of a standard 3D format like .OBJ or .3ds into SL as opposed to using the sculpty texture image (which uses a mandatory maximum number of polygons/faces, even if you don’t need them).
“They’ve been working on an opensource way to do this using the Second Life client on the OSGrid for a while now, with the help of some LL and IBM folks, the idea being that if it’s worked out over there, it will work over here, and since it’s open source, they don’t have to license it from anyone (vastly increasing the chance that they will implement it here).
“That LL is asking us if we want it is a pretty good indicator that they are prepared to serve it up for us. If not for yourselves and the improved content of SL, please support this for all the designers out there who pull their hair out trying to work with sculpties. :)”
Here’s the link:
https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/MISC-1494
You’ll need to log in with your Second Life name and password to see all the options and … most important of all … to vote!
Prim Perfect 
The entry is half of a two-part one – the other proposal being “vote here if you’d prefer for LL to work on improving existing prim modeling tools over mesh import” at https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/MISC-1495
There are of course arguments for both, but I suspect that it is technically more likely that mesh import will occur before improved tools being developed (even if I voted for the latter).