where does the support faq answer any of my questions? I could see nothing about how to obtain information when the server as a whole goes down, which I just reread, and read before I posted. like I said, my main concern is when the server goes down, where can I go to get info that at least tells me the problem is being worked on, and if its something thats been down a couple days, an estimate of when it might be back would be helpful.
from what geoff said, it sounds like my guess was correct, and the forums will go down along with the rest of the server, making them useless for sitewide outages, however its at least useful to know if its just my site. I'll look into the stack exchange thing geoff mentioned.