Putting up a warning notice/banner for maintenance

[autisticalice]

 I think there should be a banner or something saying if maintenance will be at a certain time and to prepare for it. I came up with this idea because of the recent maintenance where it was rather unpredictable and I had no idea it was coming. As a disabled person, I need to have predictability in order to plan my activities wisely so that nothing bad is triggered.

 

Otherwise, unpredictability might trigger a big meltdown. I'm sure there are other users that don't have twitter or ways of knowing when maintenance will happen since they might not check the dw_maintenance constantly to check. What would be effecient is having an estimate of the time for maintenance before it starts, how long it will be and whatever.

 

As I said before, I'm the type of person that needs predictability and proper structure so that a meltdown/outburst isn't triggered by a surprise maintenance closure, especially when I don't know how long that will last, it can cause a lot of distress for me.

 

I don't think there would be any drawbacks, except maybe it might bother some people but it is more beneficial to be aware of what is going to happen. it will give people time to plan what they want to say wisely and possibly know that they have to make an entry before the maintenance starts... or whatever.

(I'm not sure if this is allowed but it is a real problem for me)

Comments

[denise]

Just to repeat what I said to your suggestion submission so others can see the reasoning as well, we've talked about the idea of having a sitewide notification system across the top of site-skinned pages and journal pages, but a number of people said that would be more of a cognitive accessibility issue for them to have things changing unpredictably (and of course having an additional element inserted into the page can also produce problems for screenreaders).

We do suggest that all users stay subscribed to the dw_maintenance community (it's why new accounts are subscribed to that community by default) and we try our very best to update it as far in advance as we can whenever there's planned maintenance, whether that will include downtime or not! It is the canonical source for announcement of maintenance, downtime, and other things that might go wrong.

[autisticalice]

Well, another thing i was going to add, which didn't was for the tagging system... but it might not work for others, like what you said. I did post in the survey thing that I found here so it might actually help you know what might help me and how... i guess. ><;