I suggest maybe taking the time to tell people when restarts and updates will be applied. I wouldn't think posting a quick sentence on the forums or twitter about a restart or small patch being applied would be that difficult but it seems if you're trying to find out what is happening to the server it's impossible.
All that is needed is a simple locked and pinned thread called "Server Status" in the announcements forum and every dev just posts a short message whenever they change something.