Wait! I’ve got it! Someone is *cloning *hamsters! Yeah–that’s the ticket! We’ve got identical hamsters running around loose and out of control. We need a Hamster Wrangler! Or maybe the hamsters need to ***wear ***tiny pairs of Wranglers…
BTW, there are no timeouts at this hour. The other day I couldn’t sleep and I was on here at 4 am and there were no timeouts. So if everyone just sets their alarms… <pondering> No, that won’t work, will it?
That’s all I got.
I AM THE HAMSTER! Goo-goo-ga-joob! (Yes, I wear Wranglers.) 
So what we need is to have some kind of automated on-line scheduler, so we can all sign-up for appointed time-slots to read/lurk/post, like getting an appointment with the Department of Motor Vehicles. 
Only 50 users allowed on the Dope at a time (including lurkers)! On-line distancing.
And you have to wear a mask while posting!
Are we supposed to believe it takes months to find a solution? If money is the problem just say so, nobody is going to get mad .
Just had four timeouts in a row… will this go through? Who knows?
To be clear, though, I don’t really believe that these time-outs happen particularly at times of heavy usage. I, too, am often on-line at all hours, and I see time-outs in the middle of the night too. I know that we have users all around the world, but I’m pretty sure that international usage is much lighter. So when it’s darktime in the western hemisphere, I presume that usage is light around the rest of the world. Yet time-outs still happen.
They do seem to come in spells, though. I often click on a bunch of threads is rapid succession, to open a bunch in separate tabs. Typically, if the board stalls on one of them, it stalls on all of them. And if the stall breaks loose before the time-out error and the thread opens, then all of them will at about the same time.
Is this board hosted on the same servers that also host many other web sites (or other computer activities) too? I wonder if there is some activity caused by other (non-SDMB) users on the same servers that might be causing this?
as I mentioned above Google runs the servers for this site so there are many other users but that should not matter since Google is big enough to handle the load if you are willing to pay for the size needed. Google does not have any control of what software you use as long as the software isn’t malware.
This is what I do, too. And when they’ve all stalled, I go back and methodically reload each tab (repeatedly, if necessary) and eventually, one by one, they all load.
Also if I post something or edit a post and get a timeout, most of the time the post or the edit HAS gone through (I’ve started checking before I re-post).
Virtually no timeouts the last couple of day. LOTS of them today. Hello, Sunday!
I’ve had lots continuously the last couple days, the same as the couple before that etc.
after 6 months it becomes more obvious they don’t really want to spend money to fix the problem. As long as people stick around it won’t be fixed.
I’m not getting many notifications today. That’s new.
Watch, I’ll bet you will get a flood of notifications later, all at once. The routine that handles that function is low priority – I often get notifications to a post that I saw hours ago.
Who thinks the problem will be fixed this year? Not me
I would bet it’s not fixed this year but bets are not allowed. 
It’s an annoyance and something to complain about (like the weather), but it won’t drive me away. I don’t care if it never gets fixed. Being part of the discussions here is worth a little annoyance. Hell, it’s not even CLOSE to the annoyance I put up with when I worked in an office all those years!
Yep, I plan to be here until the lights go out. Mine or the boards’.
I had issues today just on the two very long threads- Virus latest news and Obvious things.
Maybe close them and get a new thread started.
It seems to me, too, that the longest threads are the ones in which I’m more likely to get timed out.
IF there is some hard limit on thread size beyond which the timeouts are highly likely to happen, the experience of posters here could be improved a lot by having mods break the big threads into Part 1, Part 2, etc. as needed. The labeling would allow interested readers to check out the entire thread, part by part, while not being punished for trying to participate in them by the dreaded 504s.
It won’t drive me away either, but it does not make me want to spend more money here. I’m waiting to see how it performs come time for my membership to expire. If it’s no better, I’ll just revert to Guest status.