[QUOTE=Chronos]
The basic problem is that whenever server capability improves, so does usage, until the Board again reaches a just-tolerable state, at which point equilibrium sets in. Other boards that do not have this problem have already saturated their target demographic. When, eventually, we saturate our target demographic, we will also get consistently good performance.
And this will happen eventually. Assuming that our target demographic consists only of humans, it must necessarily be no larger than the population of the Earth. The UN estimates that the human population of the planet will reach a maximum of approximately 9 billion, or approximately 150,000 times the current SDMB membership. So a server with 150,000 times the capability of the current one would be able to handle such a maximally-saturated load at approximately the same level of quality as is currently found, and a server with a little more than that would handle the load at a high quality (since the load would not grow any further). Assuming that all relevant aspects of server capability continue to grow according to Moore’s Law, it will take less than 26 years before the server capability reaches this point. So no, the current slowness is not a permanent affliction.
[/QUOTE]
That’s a very positive outlook. In fact…too positive 
Although you may reach a stable equilibrium if the only terms you consider are rate of change of membership and processor speed, you also have to consider the rate of change of enabling board features that facilitate user interaction such as private messages. Unless this term eventually goes to zero, the board will at some point come to a grinding halt, even if these additions are periodic. It’s possible that increases in processing, memory and disk capacity could supplant this growth, but it’s also possible that, consistent with our experience, enabling board features far exceeds the capacity of the technology the Reader thinks they are able to pay for given the size of their membership. This will cause the target demographic to ask their General Questions elsewhere, where such features are available, and thus we will see a decline in membership.
The market is already known to be far larger than the membership of this board, yet the Reader has failed to attract these new members en masse, primarily for not understanding how enabling and inviting new technologies (such as search engines) can positively effect their bottom line.
That is My Very Humble Opinion. Hopefully I’m around to see myself proved wrong.