I too have seen this.
I contacted our host and they pinned the blame on our site, which I do not believe.
I did though, do some maintenance, tweaked some settings and optimized the databases. This may cause you all to have to reset your read markers.
Click here to tell the database that you have read all the posts on dodgeboard.com.
Please let me know if any issues persist.
If we continue to have problems, we will be looking at moving our site from HostGator to another host. While HostGator was great when they first started, they have grown to the point that service has faultered terribly.
We currently share a server with 112 other websites, as compared to 28 a year ago. I believe another site on our shared server is the problem, not us, since it happens at 1:30 in the morning when our site is not busy.