And the result of the essential maintenance of this site is...

I can't see any obvious improvements.  

There was even a four hour outage yesterday evening.

My email notifications haven't worked in years.

The main difference I've noticed is that I'm having to reset the colour mode to calm every time I come to the site now, as it's not remembering any more.

Yes, I see that email  notification no longer happens

Since joining the Community approximately 18 months ago, I had never experienced any issues with not receiving notification e-mails. This changed after the essential maintenance the other week.

Although it can be easy enough to follow what's happening on the forums when I'm not signed in, I find it mildly frustrating that I now need to make a point of signing in to check if I have received any private messages.

Agreed. I'd hoped the email problem would have been fixed by now but they're still not working.

I find it much harder to keep track of thread replies without any email notifications. I'm less inclined to engage with the forum as a result.