Whenever I get one of those forum "features," I just hit refresh (usually <F5>) and it tends to display correctly.

Yup, Refresh does the trick for those. In fact, probably wouldn't have paid attention if they were the only problem. 

For me, most of the time it's like going downstream in a speedboat at full throttle.  

But occasionally it's like going up a ski slope with an elephant strapped to my back.

Other times it's like being strapped up in a straight jacket whilst trying to navigate a river full of crocodiles.  

Rarely, it's like being sucked into a black hole, torn to a trillion pieces then miraculously rematerialized in a parallel universe. 

LOL Good one. :) See, this morning, I can't even post a reply using Safari. If I hit "Reply to Message" it takes me back to the top of the page. If I use "Quick Reply" at the bottom of the page, nothing happens when I click "Post Message".

I saw something interesting on the news last night. For the last couple weeks there have been a number of cyber attacks going on at a few companies. It seems the attacks are so big that all internet traffic is being slowed down.

I've noticed it for the last week, and combined with the outdated forum software it's been painful.

That could explain the slowness, indeed. Here's another fine example of issues I'm having. From my end these days, if someone told me so, it wouldn't be hard to believe that this place is falling to pieces and has been abandoned to die a slow death...

FWIW - Even just hitting preview for the above post in FireFox, I had nothing but errors.

Don't mind me gentlemen - the issues w/ these forums are ongoing so I'm doing a bit of testing...

EDIT - Okay, so it's frickin' TOTALLY random. 

Unreliable, that's what you are...
Unreliable, in every way
And forever more, that's how you'll stay...

Daily Random Glitch No 12 956 - This morning, Safari displays the forum ok, BUT, I cannot type in Quick Reply. In fact, I can't do a thing but read posts.