When a post just says [comment deleted] it's still there. When a member closes an account, the post actually disappears completely, and everything after it gets renumbered.
Loading a Large Forum

This may be the how they're doing it with the new policy. Up to this point, though, even when people closed their own accounts voluntarily all their posts disappeared. People like orangehonda, etc.

Your link goes to a game [wrong-- I see now this is a post by orangehonda] by orangehonda. Games were never deleted for closed accounts. Posts were.
As I said, that is the new policy as described by staff 2 days ago. Posts from closed accounts reappeared when the policy changed.
EDIT: whoops, my apologies, your link is to an oranghonda post of a game. But as I said, those just reappeared.

Not just any page - specifically the page of a large thread. A slow connection would impact the loading of every page.
Perhaps pages of large threads are more likely to contain images (of waffles), video or other non-text?
No. I experience this problem in word associations.
ahh yes I notice this with "if you know" thread but just a fraction slower than normal.

It takes about 3 seconds to go to any "normal page" on chess.com but takes about 15 seconds to go to a large word association.

agreed it took me 15 sec to load up the word ass. that's why I don't go there. (c8
Yes, and it also takes an additional 15 sec. to comment. On top of that, there are multiple word associations.

Suggestions: -put this in the "Site feebacks and Suggestions" thread.
- comment this in there http://blog.chess.com/view/site-enhancements---20110630?ncc=5
- suggest this to kohai nicely.

Should I say:
Hello. It appears that when I load a large forum (e.g. word associations), it takes a very long time to open. Is it possible so that the computer can load the page faster? Thanks.

no that won't work, this has nothing to do with the computer. Just say 'Please lock these thread the ones with more than 200 pages, this is ridiculous ! It takes forever to load up !! '
edit: but with kohai, more nicer please.
If it gets marked for deletion, then I believe it counts as a post. Otherwise, it won't.