Bridget [name omitted for privacy reasons] wrote:

what is being done about the lag? what is the problem?

Too many people using the site. Feel free to be noble and sacrifice yourself for the common good. ;)

Seriously, our database backend isn't structured as efficiently as it might be, and MySQL is not very forgiving. As the site gets more popular (and more widely linked-to), load at peak hours (mid-day in the US) gets to be too much for the poor thing. The db freezes up from too many simultaneous accesses, and you hhaaavveee ttttooooooo wwwwaaaaaiiiittttt aaaaa llloooonnngggg ttttiiimmmmeeee fffffoooorrrr aaaannnnnyyyy ttttthhhhiiinngggg.

Replacing MySQL with Postgresql, which has better locking and is said to scale better to heavy loads, is one option being explored.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)