From time to time our non-UK friends get upset when the MN board closes (OK, long enough for a cuppa, but still can be frustrating) and also some night-owls get the same situation, but part of the reason for moans about it concern the possible (usual!) loss of something being submitted as a new post.
I know that some browsers may allow the user to return to the previous content, and have just seen DamianTech recommend a 'form recovery' utility (though I suspect some might be unable to install if they have a company laptop - anything which might capture content including credit card details etc could be a security risk).
We know you somehow switch any request to cause the error notification page ("sorry, the system is down at the moment, back soon" or similar) but please, MNHQ, could you ask the Tech staff to create a fix that would accept the submitted form, note the details for which topic/thread it was meant to be going into, and then say:
"Thanks for your submission - it has not gone into a black hole but will appear when Mumsnet's service returns".
A person submitting a form will only get that when the service is "down" (for backup etc) and it would probably need only one small database to capture the information being submitted, and then when things are back up and running, that database would have to be 'emptied' (details copied into the main message database(s)) as if those users had just submitted their posts.
The person who has spent a half hour finding web links etc and clicks the 'submit post' button would get that message, know they cannot submit anything else for a while, and presumably try refreshing the page to see when everything was running again, so the maximum number of new messages which would need to be stored should be very low - only one per "active" visitor and at 3am, that's likely to be quite a small number. Multiply up by 10 100 for the odd 'emergency shut down' during the evening and you can perhaps get an idea of the size of the database needed to temporarily store new submissions.
Please can you see how viable this idea would be? I put "multiply by 100" because I've no idea how many users submit posts at peak times on MN, but no doubt that is a "known" or can be found out.
It would lead to a lot of happier non-UK users and any UK users who sometimes get affected would also give it a "yes please" response, I feel sure. May also lead to far less cursing of computers and 'why does it happen to me!' questions :)