There can be more people online and the website still loads fine. With people just reading and posting leisurely. When you have 1,000 people posting and refreshing pages frantically when numbers get posted, that would slow down the server. So the number of people online isn't directly proportional to the speed of the website.

Actually...no...

The more people on a site the more info is sent to each one of those users from the server (DSL/Cable just makes gathering the info from the sites/server faster), so say 1,500 users refresh a page at the same time, thats 1,500 times the server has to send the info to each of those individual user (and the info can be greater or less then depending on the size of the page).

Even if the users are just browsing the site, like now, the server is constantly sending info to each and every user which in turn will create lag on the site.

If someone is logged onto the site and editing with out shutting down the server, pages will load funny as when hitting refresh the user is trying to have the server resend the last info, but after and update new info is taken place and objects/info will not be read correctly with the browser and in turn will create missing images, or background.

See Update Link in OP Post.

the server has been under extra strain. The new sigs are causing bandwidth to be used by viewers not on this site, so you can't see how many people are requesting information from the server.

Also, with some of the new exclusive screens this site gets, I'm sure more of those are being hot linked too.

Hopefully there will be a server update soon.

The first day sales for Gears 2 story got dugg.

But how long will the server say you are logged on before it decides to not count you as being online anymore? If its a pretty long window, you can have lots of people online who are just reading and not refreshing. People idling wouldn't be requesting information from the servers.

Wouldn't it make sense that 2000 people online who aren't refreshing at the same time, loading a page every 2 minutes or so, put less drag on a server than 1000 people online who are constantly loading pages and refreshing?

The people that stay idle on pages is a small fraction.

Some browsers have an auto refresh, which will refresh the page for you.

But I think that fraction is the same as people just leaving the page open as you stated above.

As for Digg.com, The gears article was Dugg & made Popular 2 days ago, and is off the front page.

I was on here when it first hit front page at it's peak and the pages loaded good, or better then tonight I should say.

I guess I'm in that small fraction then. n_n

I idle a lot. Tab browsing has spoiled me. I'm normally on 8 different tabs doing something else. While also playing a game or eating.

When I'm at work, I idle on my cell phone. Relaod vgchartz every 10 minutes or so.