Note, this is semi-serious, mainly due to the fact the blogs were down and my imagination wasn't... It's also possible this is already the case, just not linked in the maintenance message. Mod-closed? Extreme downvoting? Meh, and meh.
Post updates on outages on #twitter as well as (some apparently future) postmortem blog entry:
Routine maintenance usually takes less than an hour. If this turns into an extended outage, we will post details on the blog and twitter.
Because we're so interested in knowing what's really going on... in realtime...
#stackeasy: Just brought all SE sites down. Last minute always #sukx, but preemptive strikes are #kewl.
#stackeasy: Just gotta get in there and reload that (breaking) #phlugerphlarg before it #overfloods. Shutting down...
#stackeasy: This is gonna be easy. Shutdown and rebuilding, maybe I'll get some coffee from #starducks.
#stackeasy: What the! DB host is sharding itself, abort abort!
#stackeasy: This coffee is terrible.
#stackeasy: All sites down now without warning (well, not much of one) for over an hour. Rebuilding again.
#stackeasy: Anybody know a good Chinese place in #Sasketchewan (sp?)?
#stackeasy: Good thing we kept that restore point...
#stackeasy: Bringing back #metaso, the crybabies.
#stackeasy: Alright, so that came up. Now one at a time.
#stackeasy: But what the
#stackeasy: all yer citez blong to us
#stackeasy: intertoobz are for boobz
#stackeasy: lolz lolz needz moor kowbel
#stackeasy: localhost is #publicmine!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
#stackeasy: That was #soweird. Ok, should be restarting 800 lb gorilla in 5, 4, 3, 2 ...
#stackeasy: Ok, anybody know how to restart this thing? I keep getting errors. Just reply to #stackeasy with codez, plz.