Might be you don't want to compare it to the "who is using NodeBB" topic, since that is a very large topic and loads 20 posts, vs 1 on the other side. It's a bit of an unfair comparison 😄
However... to you and @phenomlab's credit, I am now seeing that the nodebb.min.js file is much larger on this site. It should be larger as we use more plugins compared to try.nodebb.org, but it shouldn't be that much larger.
Likely there is some code optimization opportunity here 😄