Clay, neither of the glitches mentioned are new occurrences. The orphaned response to a thread occurs rarely, but it has been noticed and responded to, in the past. Not much to say on that score, except "it happens".

The occasional stalling was quite pronounced when we started using the current server farm. A phone call to tech support there got them to look into it and they pronounced "no problems". Strangely, the stalling almost completely went away after that. Still happens once in a while though. Another thing that may make the forums take a bit more time to load is a recent change that makes more threads viewable on each page of the forums. The number was bumped up in order to keep active threads viewable on the first page for a longer period. Of course, each user's request for the forum page needs to be queried and sent and that all takes time. Again, this stuff is all a trade-off. Every change has consequences. Some of the delay may also be slightly related to the time of day and traffic on the site during that time. Probably comes as no surprise to many, that hourly traffic has peaks and valleys.