Not just you!
Virtually unusable….fast being driven away.
Such a shame, but they have had plenty of time to get it sorted.

No it’s not a problem local to you and has been discussed many times; the developers are aware, and hopefully working on a solution.

If your intention is just to read for a while, try doing so without logging in.
Everything is much snappier, though the Latest Replies list might well be out of date.

This post may, or not, make sense.

I suspect, providing you are using a browser where you can have multiple tabs open, you could open one and log on (slowly 🙂 ) then navigate to “Forums”. That would give you the current  Latest Replies list displayed at the foot of the page.
Duplicate that tab and log off in the second one; the Latest Replies might be out of date in that tab, but the forum is faster.
To navigate to a very recent reply, go to tab 1, but right click and open in a new tab. (on a PC anyway).
You’ll still be logged off in that new tab, but I think it will work faster than awaiting a screen refresh.

Edit; just tried the above and it works fine.
Obviously if you wish to reply or post yourself, or view a user profile, you’ll need to log back in.

Bill

On 13 November 2023 at 22:19 Nigel Graham 2 Said:

…

I’m sure the previous version ran a lot more directly and rapidly. So is this some problem with my PC or is this site in fact unusually slow?

No reason to suspect your PC … the site is in fact unusually slow

[ even on my very fast Mac mini, and full fibre broadband ]

My hopelessly uninformed guess is that there are two fundamental problems:

1. The underlying software is as bloated as can be, and
2. Whatever sorting routine they are using is [shall we say] ‘sub-optimal’ for the large dataset that it is working upon.

MichaelG.

.

Ref. __ just to put a toe in the water

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocktail_shaker_sort

For me, the speed of the forum depends on whether I’m logged in or not. If the former, then speed is woeful. If logged out then the speed is good. Why should this be so, what extra processes does a logged-on operation entail for the server? I counter this to some extent by having two bookmarks, one automatically logged in, the other not.

This feature is a great discouragement to participation in the forum.

On 14 November 2023 at 11:19 Nigel Graham 2 Said

… I wonder if one of the worst overheads is the constantly-changing ads: ‘AllMyReads” as the greediest with not only three pages but also displayed twice,  in two identical, simultaneous side-bar panels. Also Sarik Hobbies’: a single window but also three images.

 

The flashing multi page ads are simply ‘gif’ images. They are quite small and only have to load once. I doubt they have much in the way of overhead for the web server. Once loaded the browser copes with all the image changes.

John

Just noticed something rather odd; which might possibly have some effect upon the slow performance of the database sorting:

The ‘path’ that I have outlined in red seems illogical to me

… Within that group of 25 there are several which are not Tea Room Topics.

MichaelG.

.

Worth noting, incidentally, that at the bottom of that list there is a link to the full list [!] … which gives some indication of the scale of the sorting task.

.

On 17 November 2023 at 11:00 JasonB Said:

………………

And yes you have found the 6th way to get to “Forums”

Or maybe the 7th (I’d missed that one) 🕵🏻‍♂️

It might be going too far off topic, but there’s still a “Forums” on a tab hiding somewhere.

Bill

On 17 November 2023 at 10:53 Michael Gilligan Said:

Just noticed something rather odd; which might possibly have some effect upon the slow performance of the database sorting:

The ‘path’ that I have outlined in red seems illogical to me

… Within that group of 25 there are several which are not Tea Room Topics.

MichaelG.

Michael; this gets very difficult to demonstrate without including lots of screenshots, since it looks like the iPad’s display is slightly different to what I see in a PC browser window, where I readily see the page’s address.
The content though is the same.

Your own screenshot showed a list/table under the grey Banner of Latest Replies.
This is the most recently compiled Latest Replies list, generated by the site from when you last refreshed the screen.
The blue “Latest Replies” button is a hyperlink to this location on the same overall page to save the user scrolling down.

Any of the six (or seven+) “Forums” shortcuts takes you to a table of all of the site’s individual forums, shown in bold type.

Scrolling down that list and clicking on The Tea Room takes you here /forums/forum/the-tea-room/
i.e. the “Forums” section of the overall site > an individual Forum, called The Tea Room, but still at the head of it; normal typeface I think.

Now clicking on a singular topic in that list in The Tea Room forum, takes you here. We are now looking at a specific topic within the Forums part of the site’s structure

Scrolling down that same page, without using the “Latest Replies” blue button takes you here;
Note the address is the same. The Blue Button is just a scrolling shortcut to here further down the page.
This is the banner at the top of the previously compiled list of latest replies.

You are still in the same Tea Room topic, on the same page, but lower down it; now viewing the list of Latest Replies for the whole site, which as you say is huge, and was first generated when you originally viewed this topic in Tea Rooms.
I guess it takes a long time to re-generate.

Whenever you cause a screen refresh, by replying, visiting a different topic, pressing Forums, or the back button etc, this list is re-compiled; bear in mind other users may also be causing a re-compile at the same time as you.

If I view a Latest Replies list to see what’s changed recently, and (on a PC) > right click > open in a new tab, for say five interesting looking posts/topics, I re-generate this list five times at the foot of the page in each tab, and depending on how long I’ve been selecting the five new tabs, the lists may well be different if someone has posted during my selection.

Bill