Predictably, with minor and major updates, the servers are overwhelmed.
Then there are days when nothing special is going on but something is hiccupping with the servers.
This leads to topics opened just to be told the servers are busy.
In my case, the only way I know, for sure, the servers are acting up is to test the servers. That's not helpful.
OpenWrt could:
add a comment to the most common fail outputs caused by servers:
"possible server issue if you see this error randomly, please try later"
place some eye-catching icon that reflects current servers' statuses from polling.
an icon that changes in accordance with the servers' historic demand. e.g. whatever time GMT has lightest traffic is green, heaviest is red.
a sticky when someone notices heavy traffic with a graph of suggested alternate times.
a sticky showing historic demand explaining why OpenWrt is asking for server access based on their urgency and OpenWrt's capacity. (most people will do the right thing)
do something else.