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We’ve all been there. You open a Washington Post link from your mobile phone and then … you wait.

And you wait.

And you wait.

And maybe the link finally opens. Or you give up. Or maybe, for some unlucky Android and Blackberry users, the link crashes your phone’s browser. Yikes. Not our idea of a great reader experience.

Today, we’re rolling out the first step in a long line of mobile Web improvements. If you click on a link for which we have a mobile-friendly page, we’ll point you to that quick-loading page instead of our desktop Web site.

We hope this small change gets you closer to the content you want when you want it. If you prefer to get the desktop Web page instead, click on the link illustrated at left. We’ll store your preference for the desktop Web site in a cookie, so you don’t have to keep choosing this option.

What’s next?

If you’ve noticed that the Washington Post Web site has been loading faster lately, you’re not the only one.

As noted by media Web site, Poynter, SEO and PR strategist Adam Sherk recently compared the speed of various news organizations’ homepages and found that the Post Web site page speed rating has improved 32.4 percent over last year.

Regular readers of the Post likely remember this column by Post ombudsman Patrick Pexton. In it, he detailed reader frustrations with the Post Web site.

Screenshot of the Post's homepage.Now, according to Sherk’s analysis, the Post’s homepage is as fast as other sites such as The Economist and Mashable and ranks higher on the list than the likes of The Huffington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.

As the Post’s Chief Information Officer, Shailesh Prakash noted on Ask The Post earlier this year, site performance has been a priority for the Post’s developers.

Have a burning question for Wonkblog’s Ezra Klein? You can go here, where he’ll be answering your questions throughout the day.

The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein. Kevin Clark/ The Washington Post.In addition to introducing an interactive tool that predicts the 2012 elections, Klein has already weighed in via Reddit on everything from where the “hip wonks” hang out in D.C. to his soup preference (read: he only eats soup from cartons).

Do you have questions for the Post? Whether you’re curious about our Web site, how we covered the day’s big story, a photo or anything in between, post your question in the thread below or tweet it using the hash tag #askthepost.

In our latest installment of Comments of the Week, we’re featuring a good mix of reader posts about serious and not-so-serious news. They come from our coverage of Space Shuttle Discovery’s D.C. area flyover, the Justice Department’s handling of forensic flaws in investigations, the passing of entertainment legend Dick Clark and more.

If you have missed previous installments of Comments of the Week, check out these posts: March 23 | March 30 | April 6 | April 13.

And if you see a comment you’d like to recommend for next week’s roundup, drop it in the comment stream below (how meta, right?)

Story: Dick Clark dies at age 82

Back then, when we watched “American Bandstand” and then went out and danced to the same tunes, it didn’t seem like anything very special. It seemed like it would go on forever. Why wouldn’t it? It was so harmless, and so much fun.