If 5 seconds is such a problem for you, then go to user settings and select the "All Nodelets Off" option and it will only take about 2 seconds (based on my testing) per page.

Voting is a bit of a fickle thing. It is easy for people to be put off by you criticizing the site without demonstrating (in your original node) any understanding of how the site is implemented, its history, how it is administered, etc.

You don't mention that you realize that you aren't paying anything for the benefit you get from this site and you don't acknowledge that those who would have to make it faster do all of their work without being paid a penny for it. And then you casually say just "Make it way faster". Yep, I can see how many could be a little put off by that.

And the nature of the voting system is such that if you write something that will make a small impression on a large number of people, then you get a large number of votes. So you didn't do anything horrible, but you might get quite a few downvotes because of it. But checking, I see that your root nood currently has a rep of -2! How do you jump from such a slightly low rep to "Well, it is obviously 'not done' to complain"??

But as i understand, MAJOR speed improvements can be mase with small changes.

Yes, and we have tons of these simple, huge speed changes sitting around but we haven't put any of them into effect because it never occurred to us to do so. Thanks for pointing out that we should just make a simple change to cause the site to be "way faster".</sarcasm> (: Do you assume we are just completely imcompetent? If it were trivial to make the site lots faster, we probably would have already done so.

We actually have made quite a few changes to make the site faster. Of course, these don't always keep up with the increasing popularity of the site. We have quite a few more changes that should help make the site faster as well. Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of free time to work on finishing these changes with working the job that pays to feed my family and trying to help raise my children. The situation is much the same for the others that volunteer to work on this site.

I enjoy working on this site, but I really can't spend much time doing it (I wish I could spend more). If you seriously think you can make a big difference in the speed of the site, then you'll have to do a whole lot of research without taking up other peoples' times with lots of questions if you hope to save "us" more time than you consume. I encourage you to do that. The source code for the basis for this site is just three mouse clicks away right now.