I suspect it has less to do with server problems and more to do with the 3,500 3,700 3,800 unidentified "guests". Are we being DDOSed?
No, it is Googlebot mostly..... we have changed our webmaster tools setting to slow down the crawl rate on the site. Hopefully, that will help!
That's all Google? With 3,800 search instances, it might as well be a DDOS attack 
It's not any better. 30 tries and counting to submit this reply.
---------- Post updated at 01:56 PM ---------- Previous update was at 01:54 PM ----------
The number of googlebot "guests" has increased to nearly 3,000.
The "guests" you are seeing are not Googlebot. Only "mods" can see spiders, for example, just now:
Googlebot was over 100 yesterday and it was "sucking" really hard (can see in the access.log file).
I think the issue might be related to our site map "update" for posts, which is annually, and it might be "that time a year again" and Googlebot is hitting us hard, which is "a good thing" but we need to reset the crawl rate in webmaster tools since we don't have the spare CPU for both peak time guests and a hundred Googlebot spiders pulling hard.
On the other hand, we are definitely behind in our server hardware upgrade. We like to have the server need a forum admin just in case of a major failure; and currently the server is in Ireland where reborg is; but he has been a but too busy at work in the past year to "do the upgrade deed". He has indicated recently he would be "back in action" soon.
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Site behavior returned mostly to normal shortly after I had to try 30 times to make a post above. Your work seems to have stabilized it after all. 
Yah... we instructed Googlebot to reduce its load on the site.... seems to have worked as you noticed. Thanks.
... hahaha.. and it does not "hurt" that traffic is going down as we enter into the US Thanksgiving Holiday and following weekend....