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.