A maintaince is something you know it will happen
BEFORE it happens. An
outtage/crash/emergency is something you have no idea it will happen in the
next minute.
Sure, I was a bit sloppy with the terminology, but the message still
stands. Even in an emergency, please think about _priorities_. Five
minutes taken to write a notification could save several tool
developers hours of
* figuring out what is happening
* having long downtimes due to crashed processes, broken/inconsistent
database tables
* cleaning up after bots that break or go berserk due to server outages
Sure, you can start pointing fingers at the tool developers and yell
"write better tools". But let me remind you (in case it was
forgotten). The tool developers already donate their free time to
create tools that benefit the wikimedia userbase. We are not doing
this purely for our amusement. I'm grateful the toolserver exists, but
I'm also doing my share of the work! All I'm asking is that the admins
recognize that part of their service should be not making my work
harder than it already is.