Today it seemed many (possibly all) of the stack exchange sites were put into a read only mode. I first noticed this on stackoverflow
and the message definitely caught my attention. Thinking that it might only be for SO I decided to come here and check some stuff out.
The same thing was happening here. However, I didn't notice this for a while. Could we possibly make the message more visible so that users can much more easily tell that the site is in read only mode? SO has a yellow banner that catches the eye. The message here just sort of blends in and doesn't really even seem like an announcement.
EDIT: I didn't really lose any time today but it did take me a few seconds to realize what was going on. Once again I don't think the read-one mode notification is noticeable enough. Can we please do something to make it stand out more?