I've seen lots of legitimate but less important stories out of the front page compared to normal days so I thought it is not only the penalty that the front page seemed to be clean. It might be my misconception though, and again I fully appreciate the moderation efforts.

I'm not sure I can rephrase the second paragraph better and the following analogy fits well, but I think the principle of "do not feed trolls" equally applies here. Every moderator post about the current matter signals trolls, which we want to avoid as much as possible (and we have hellbans for the reason). In my humble opinion it would be better to deliver the statistics or even small notice well before and/or after the April Fools' Day for asking communities' help and coordination.