Global Synchronizer, confirmation policies, observers, and offline nodes?

This question was discussed for Canton 2.x and the Canton 2.x docs mention confirmation policies, but…

In the Global Synchronizer, if a party’s participant node is down, does that block the creation of a contract which lists that party as an observer?

template Data with
    publisher : Party
    subscriber : Party
  where
    signatory publisher
    observer subscriber
    
    choice Data_Acknowledge : ()
      controller subscriber
      do pure ()

No, it does not.

I vaguely remember that observers could cause timeouts (because of “record order publisher”?). Or is it not related?

record order publishing issues are usually caused by confirmations timing out. observers don’t send confirmations so that doesn’t really apply here.