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Ask HN: Why are status webpages broken?

2 points by yani ↗ HN
The first place that I go when there is an outage is the status page of the service. Unfortunately, status pages are outdated and cannot be trusted to represent the status of the service. Why? Why do companies choose to use Twitter over their own status page or at least not both? GitHub Status page is 16 days behind https://status.github.com/messages Slack Status page is saying 100% uptime for the last 30 days while they are having an outage https://status.slack.com/

6 comments

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newman8r
The recent slack downtime is shown here https://status.slack.com/calendar - maybe it updated right after you posted this.

I agree though, in my experience it seems like status pages don't always accurately indicate downtime. Third party status pages might be more reliable.

yani
Yup, it was just updated.
karmakaze
Are there third-party status pages in existence? I've made a simple aggregator[0] but it only echoes what's on the published status pages and adds Twitter links.

[0] https://statuspages.me

newman8r
There's http://downdetector.com, but it's just based on user generated reports so I'm not sure if I'd count it as a status page. I'm surprised I couldn't quickly find something more objective for the status of major web applications though.

Your aggregator looks really useful, bookmarking it.

karmakaze
Thanks. I also remember downforeveryoneorjustme.com (aka isup.me) and isitdownrightnow.com which is more for just web sites' main pages, but at least they're continuous third-party checks.
LinuxBender
Unless a company puts into writing in customer contracts, language that makes the status page a requirement and that it must be accurate to {n} degree, then it will just be another tool to reduce support cases.

I would suggest having your primary account maintainer and procurement department check the language in your contract. If it does not exist, then have them amend the contract with language that requires the status page to be accurate and that allows you to monitor them from multiple locations. Perhaps consider adding language that allows you to share your monitoring results with them, your internal and external customers.

I am not a lawyer and I do not play one on TV. This is not legal or medical advise. Do not stare at happy fun ball.