People are justifiably annoyed sometimes when we make technical
changes that affect them, without sufficient notice. Our defense is
valid in the current case, i.e. there was a crisis going on, and we
had to do *something*. But still, people are right to ask to be
notified.
It would be helpful if the Recent Changes text were editable. In the
old software, the text at the top of the Recent Changes page was just
another wiki text. We could (and did) edit it from time to time to
keep people updated on technical issues. This is a great place for
it, because that text is viewed by all serious contributors many times
a day.
--Jimbo