For the past few days, every time I try to search openstreetmap.org, the search request takes a long time and frequently times out. And I’ve been blocked from https://nominatim.openstreetmap.org a couple times because of alleged access policy violations. All I’ve been doing is searching one location at a time. What is going on?
There’s some detail about the problem at https://github.com/openstreetmap/operations/issues/337 . Basically, someone (likely someone ignoring Nominatim’s usage policy) has decided to exploit a “free service” without consideration for others.