I think that it was/is some sort of upstream networking failure. I'm still seeing an above-normal level of packet loss, but it seems usable now at least. I'll keep an eye on it.
I'm not sure If this helps you out or not but while trying to access the forums when It was down, I got different types of error messages :
1. The usual that probably most of people received (Server is not responding , connection timed out)
2. an SSL error about the connection not being secure (which is the one I'm mostly worried about) , I didn't keep a screenshot but Firefox was linking me to this https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/what-does-your-connection-is-not-secure-mean (I didn't receive the error message as the first screenshot)
3. I also received this at some point and I guess the path shown here is from my PC but not sure what caused it :
