How about a forum called "Announcements" or "Current News" that sits right on top where it's easy to find?  Someone at PBS could post quick notices for members.

For example, I'm trying to mail a huge stack of books but keep getting an error when trying to print postage. It sure would be nice to know if I'm the only one, and if not, when it's expected to be fixed.  As it is now, I'm just trying and trying and trying. And wasting time and wasting time and wasting time. You get the idea.

That would be nice, the problem is that things like postage is often Endicia not PBS and they don't really have staff sitting around testing that stuff and monitoring it and posting about it.  When other members or TGs find out about stuff it gets into the forums pretty quickly. Anything major, like scheduled down time they do post about.

As Melanie said.  Site status reports aren't often feasible and the word about problems usually hits the Forums pretty quickly.

For other PBS News and New Developments, check out the What's New link at the top right side of any page.

I like your idea.  Meanwhile, when I'm wondering if something is a general problem or just me-specific, I do a quick forum search using a couple of the keywords in the error message.  People usually post about issues like this in this forum or the CMT forum.