Actually, our uptime has been better for the last 6 months than the previous few years.

I don't go on reddit often enough to have any idea about the uptime, but out of curiosity, do you think there's anything that could give someone the impression it was worse recently?

There's enough users that each 3 second downtime is long enough to get someone who submits stories like 'WHY WAS REDDIT DOWN' and enough upvotes to stay on the front page long enough for everyone else to see it. And then recency effect kicks in as soon as reddit is down for another 4 seconds later on.

That's a bit of a stretch... That "reddit is under heavy load" page is an abomination.

Try turning admin mode off. :)