[Foundation-l] Scheduled intermittent downtime on all Wikimedia projects on May 24

[Tim Starling]

On 24/05/11 23:32, Thomas Morton wrote:
> So, just a quick thought for future reference - during maintenance is it
> possible in future to update the error message to explain that maintenance
> is ongoing?
> 
> Seeing as how widely WMF projects are used by a non-technical project the
> current MySQL connection error I am seeing on Commons is just going to cause
> confusion :) And the standard error page WIkipedia was showing a minute ago
> is not particularly helpful/explanatory in this specific situation.

Database connection errors were not an anticipated consequence of the
scheduled router upgrades. The people who might have been able to
change the error message were busy diagnosing and fixing the problem.

When we have a lengthy period of downtime, more sysadmins arrive
online, and a wider perspective on the problem develops, including
attention to community impact and communication. But since the
downtime in this case was only half an hour, there was not enough time
for this to happen.

-- Tim Starling