For a long while, the forums said that my account was suspended. I assumed it was yet another technical issue on the server side?
It wasn't individual accounts that the suspension message referred to, but the forum as a whole. That seemed to be a different and obviously much worse issue than the performance troubles that we have too regularly, though it's possible there's some relationship.
For me today, the performance so far has been okay. Not as fast as it sometimes gets, but no longer than a few seconds to load or post. Touch wood!
That's what I assumed but the message was so wrong. I've always suspected the problem was the authentication, and this is just another clue pointing in that direction.
Just checking the forums this morning took me several minutes. I had to try 5-10 times because I was always getting time-outs. Once the initial page is shown, however, it gets better because (I suppose) the authentication has been done and a fresh session is available.
This will not just go away on its own, except perhaps in one month. ;-)
