(1) Are these shutdowns a worldwide phenomenon, or is
it just me (in good
old Europe) having difficulty?
Worldwide. Sucks big time.
(2) Are they planned (some sysop/developer/whoever
making some important
changes etc.) or do they happen accidentally?
Both. We've had some major database updates recently, but we also have
occasional problems. A total crash without apparent reason, and this time
MySQL max_connections problems, even though we're already at 250 and use
pconnect (persistent connections).
(3) If they are planned, could the community of users
be given notice when
and approximately for how long Wikipedia will be down?
When there's scheduled downtime, it is usually announced on the mailing
list. Let us know if you find someone willing to run a complete read-only
mirror, that would help.
Regards,
Erik