I do not think new members would know about that until they just happen to collide with it one day and see thier work blown away, scheduling disrupted or see their scrolling gallery images vanish with "no items available".
It is obvious that there are quite few new sellers joining Auctiva on a regular basis judging by the repetitive nature of the posts so would it not be easier to display the maintenance message before they find out the rough way.
Most sellers seem to start posting when a problem occurs and they need assistance, then some like myself muck-in to help others when we can. This must help your staff to get on with developing all the new widgets we can't wait to get our mitts on
So why overload the boards with highly repetitive posts by disgruntled sellers when simple messages could be displayed by Auctiva or is this seen as being a more negative form of advertisng than repeated board complaints ?