Hi,
I have to argue about the term being used repeatedly here, "addiction".
It seems that everything these days is being called an "addiction". Are we addicted to food? Are we addicted to water? Those are necessities.
Are we addicted to the web? These days the web is almost a necessity.
Also, i dont believe that everything we happen to 'like' in life should be called an 'addiction', such as ETO. Just because we like ETO and we want to know what is going on when we cant get through to the site doesnt mean we're really addicted.
If we go to a soda machine and put some money in and it malfunctions and we want to know why even though we have water at home, are we addicted to soda, or do we just prefer soda over water? Water might even be 'better' for you, but that's not how every person on earth lives their life. We like soda, so we drink soda. It's a personal choice, not a law. We like ETO, so we go to ETO, and wonder what happened if we cant reach the site when most other days we can.
The other site i talked about uses a separate server for the back up mini site, and they specify that it should not be used when the main server is up and running, but only to find out what might be wrong in case of trouble reaching the main site.
In that case they use a simpler message board where members can discuss what might be wrong, but even a simpler site with just a simple message like, "ETO is down and im working on the problem, estimated time about 2 hours", would be really nice, even without the ability to reply. Right?