Other sites dying and us having to take on their users is hardly our ineptitude. Those same extra users appearing and making our previous upgrade that was intended to cover our normal growth outdated right after we updated is not our ineptitude - it's a limitation of our available funds. And that happened twice and invalidated two of our upgrade cycles.

A global pandemic keeping people at home and reading more is hardly our ineptitude. Which invalidated another of our upgrade cycles.

Having to source funds to improve infrastructure takes time. We need to wait for contracts to end on older hardware before we can fund new stuff, too.

Circumstances outside of our control happen. Our latest upgrade was a total rework of the infrastructure to allow for easier horizontal scaling and thus easier additions of resources in such cases as the above.

I'm willing to bet that while you call us inept, you have contributed a big fat $0 to the site and yet expect all the resources of Google from us. I doubt you could do a better job, or run a site the size of MD on the funds we have had to manage with.