It would seem to me that a listing of eBay and AS outages would be a good feature for the NEWS AND UPDATES folder. This way people could check there when they allege that snipes were not placed, to see if there were any system-wide issues. The bright yellow bulb (when a new message has been placed) and a post entitled "eBay system outage" or similar would certainly call attention to the thread, especially since it is located on top of the other folders.