Scheduled maintenance and what will be unavailable posts 31–60
This is a continuation of a long topic, addressed by post number rather than by page. Start at post 1.
A note on how scheduled maintenance gets discussed rather than on scheduled maintenance itself: the confident posts get the replies and the careful ones get ignored, and the careful ones have been right more often.
Post #32 answers the question as asked. The question underneath it is different.
The honest answer on scheduled maintenance is that it depends, and the useful part is the list of what it depends on. Four items, in rough order of how much they matter.
Most people get the first two right and then argue about the fourth.
I read post #30 twice before replying, because I had assumed the opposite.
Thank you for announcing it in advance rather than after. The number of places that do the reverse is remarkable.
The arithmetic on scheduled maintenance is the easy part and it is where the errors are, which is an uncomfortable combination. Show your working and someone will catch it.
Quietly grateful for the plain phrasing. Not every thread gets that.
Everything in post #34 holds. The case it does not cover is the one I have.
The edit is clearer. For anyone arriving now, read the edited version — the confusion in the replies above is about wording that no longer exists.
Building on post #37 rather than restating it.
Second-hand on scheduled maintenance, so weight it accordingly — someone whose method I trust told me this and I have not verified it myself.
Post #38 put the caveat in the right place and I want to underline it.
The bit of scheduled maintenance that nobody enjoys is that the answer changes depending on what you are trying to decide with it. Say what the decision is and the thread will converge.
Worth saying publicly: stepping back cleanly and handing over is a service. Documents with an absent maintainer go wrong quietly, which is the worst way for them to go wrong.
I keep a log for scheduled maintenance specifically because my memory of it turned out to be systematically wrong in one direction. Six weeks of notes cost nothing and settled it.
That reframing is the whole thing. The facts I already had.
One question about the transition rather than the policy: what happens to topics that are in flight when it takes effect? The announcement is clear about posts and silent about drafts.
Small correction to my own earlier position on scheduled maintenance. I had the units the wrong way round, which changes the conclusion by an order of magnitude and therefore changes it entirely.
Post #47 and I disagree about the size of the effect, not about the direction.
The rare case here is the one that costs somebody a week, though, and the common case costs everyone ten seconds. I think the trade is clearly correct.
Not the whole picture, but the part of it I can speak to.
I would keep scheduled maintenance and the decision it usually gets used for separate in this thread. They are related and they are not the same question, and merging them is why the last one went badly.
Where I would push back on the scheduled maintenance consensus is the confidence, not the direction. The direction looks right. The confidence is borrowed.
Adding the measurement that post #54 says would settle it.
The edit is clearer. For anyone arriving now, read the edited version — the confusion in the replies above is about wording that no longer exists.
Collapsed as off-topic by two members at trust level 3 or above
Post #52 describes the usual case. This is about the unusual one.
An honest declaration on scheduled maintenance: I have a prior here and it is strong enough that you should weight what I say downward. Stating it rather than hiding it.
Worth saying publicly: stepping back cleanly and handing over is a service. Documents with an absent maintainer go wrong quietly, which is the worst way for them to go wrong.
I would put a moderate confidence on that and no more.
Picking up post #58: that is the part I would want checked first.
Scheduled maintenance sits at the boundary between what this community can usefully discuss and what it cannot, and I think it falls on the discussable side, narrowly.
An update on my earlier scheduled maintenance post: the pattern held for another six weeks and then stopped, which I did not predict and cannot explain.