Is the forum slow for anyone else?

[Robert Ramsay]

I've noticed in the last few days that the forum intermittently slows to a crawl when I click on things. Just wanted to check whether anyone else was getting this, and whether @SkullTraill had noticed anything?

 

[Robert Ramsay]

It's been an hour. How is it now?

sorry I was busy working, so I don't know when it recovered :-/

Needless to say, it's fine now.

 

[Yazata]

Funny. Forum was incredibly slow all day. Even during this visit. I come to this thread and now the speed is normal

 

[SkullTraill]

Just experienced a slowdown for about 15 minutes, but I can’t tell if it’s just me because my internet has been bad all day. Anyone else? It’s back to normal for me now though.

 

[KitKat4016]

I've noticed in the last few days that the forum intermittently slows to a crawl when I click on things. Just wanted to check whether anyone else was getting this, and whether @SkullTraill had noticed anything?

yes it reminds me of dial up lol

 

[Aeternus]

Just experienced a slowdown for about 15 minutes, but I can’t tell if it’s just me because my internet has been bad all day. Anyone else? It’s back to normal for me now though.

The forum wasn't at all slow for me . It surely must have been bad bandwidth in your area. Things can get clogged especially if on your bandwidth there are a lot of packets going through and that also need to be downloaded back (modern OS features or apps that constantly check for updates can hog on resources).

 

[Phillian]

Well, I had experience now and then a bit of lag, but I assumed it was on my end and not on the forum. However, around 17:00 [GMT], I did experience a bit of slowness when I visited the forum. Currently, at 21:11 [GMT], I do not experience that slowness. Again, I was not sure if it was my internet or not, but seeing that a few other members experience, perhaps it was a bit of both? Not sure...

 

[Amadeus]

The forum wasn't at all slow for me

In the recent weeks it was sometimes slow but mostly fine. In the recent days I noticed some weird lag in the mornings and evenings EU time. Let's say... hmm checking the GMT times.... 5am GMT, then between 4pm to 7pm GMT. I checked the site every 30-40 mins and yes a few times it did take quite a long time to load something. Nothing that serious but you can tell the difference that there's lag.

 

[Aeternus]

Short update: forum was slow for me at 7:27 P.M. Now it is normal for me

 

[PearApple]

Throughout the whole day of August 19th, there were many instances where it was quite slow. Thought it was my own internet but thanks to this thread, I realize it's a forum-wide issue

 

[Kepler]

1700GMT+1
started dragging after working normally in the last few hours.

Post automatically merged: Aug 20, 2026

It's back to normal 1740GMT+1

 

[Amadeus]

Alright so 5am UTC, first the site took around 20 seconds to load, then the login box another 15, and then some more lag. Insert quote box was lagging as well, giving likes was lagging. I am guessing 5am UTC, late hours in US.. the site host is where? USA?

Right now 5:15 UTC, no more lag anywhere, at least for now.

 

[Lord Talve]

Sometimes How can I put this hmm
Maybe 1.İts A internet connection problem
2.internet is broken I dont know about internet Technology advanced level

 

[tigra]

I've noticed in the last few days that the forum intermittently slows to a crawl when I click on things. Just wanted to check whether anyone else was getting this, and whether @SkullTraill had noticed anything?

me too

 

[Kepler]

5:50 GMT+1 slow

 

[ChaoBell]

Doesn’t bother me, feels like an old school site, which I love. I’ll take it over the cloudflare “checking if your human” then blocking you with a broken captcha thing. Put it on a mini server by the couch and let it slow down when Netflix is on, just keep it going, these cool old sites are vanishing.

 

[SkullTraill]

Doesn’t bother me, feels like an old school site, which I love. I’ll take it over the cloudflare “checking if your human” then blocking you with a broken captcha thing. Put it on a mini server by the couch and let it slow down when Netflix is on, just keep it going, these cool old sites are vanishing.

Funny thing is, I've been keeping an eye on this issue recently, and while I can't conclude with 100% certainty yet, from my short investigation: it seems like the forum slows down mainly during periods where there are over 4000 guests on the website. I've never noticed a slowdown when it's around 2000.

If you guys can check this as well (On the main page, in the "Members Online" section, you should be able to see how many users are browsing the website at that moment including guests).

If this is the reason for the slowdown, then surely it's because some of these guests are "crawling" the forums (typically AI scrapers/bots). In this case, the most obvious solution is what you mentioned... the captcha "are you human" bot check/filters. I'm sure that would be somewhat annoying to many people too... but probably not as annoying as an hour or WF being slow.

Though for now it seems like most people are experiencing slowness for around 15 minutes.

These are my current thoughts/findings. I will keep investigating more as much as I am able to.

 

[Aeternus]

Funny thing is, I've been keeping an eye on this issue recently, and while I can't conclude with 100% certainty yet, from my short investigation: it seems like the forum slows down mainly during periods where there are over 4000 guests on the website. I've never noticed a slowdown when it's around 2000.

If you guys can check this as well (On the main page, in the "Members Online" section, you should be able to see how many users are browsing the website at that moment including guests).

If this is the reason for the slowdown, then surely it's because some of these guests are "crawling" the forums (typically AI scrapers/bots). In this case, the most obvious solution is what you mentioned... the captcha "are you human" bot check/filters. I'm sure that would be somewhat annoying to many people too... but probably not as annoying as an hour or WF being slow.

Though for now it seems like most people are experiencing slowness for around 15 minutes.

These are my current thoughts/findings. I will keep investigating more as much as I am able to.

Shouldn't the bots / crawlers be registered. I mean, I have seen the ones Google, etc.?

 

[SkullTraill]

Shouldn't the bots / crawlers be registered. I mean, I have seen the ones Google, etc.?

The search engine crawlers, yes. But the new gen AI feeder bots are unlabelled, I think.

 

[Aeternus]

The search engine crawlers, yes. But the new gen AI feeder bots are unlabelled, I think.

True. I think that a "are-you-human" ChaptCa verification should do the work. I would recommend hCaptcha as it is much more effective than Google ReCaptcha.

 

[SkullTraill]

True. I think that a "are-you-human" ChaptCa verification should do the work. I would recommend hCaptcha as it is much more effective than Google ReCaptcha.

We already use hCaptcha for registration but in this case it would be using cloudflare to "filter bots" so that would be cloudflare's own/choice of captcha for that particular scenario.