Lee, it would be good if the response times you posted on wikipedia-l could be annotated with the exact time when the requests arrived at the server (should be contained in the server's log file).
Maybe the server slows down when too many requests arrive in a short time interval, or in a short time interval following some special request. Also, we need to know in chronological order which requests preceeded the slow ones; I don't think your list contains that information.
Axel