The quality of the site seems to have risen significantly over the past week. Is this the result of inspired tinkering, or just a random upswing? I was hoping to read through the recent commits to news.arc, but I wasn't able to find a public repository of the Arc code.
The quality of the stories, or the comments?<p>The only changes recently are a better voting ring detector, and the hiding of comment scores. The former has definitely kept stuff off the frontpage that otherwise would have made it.<p>It's harder to say if the hiding of comment scores has made comments better. It has definitely made the site more pleasant for me to use, but I may be in a unique position because people love to pick fights with me.
I know many disagree with hiding comment scores, but in my view, the quality of discussions has notably improved since scores are hidden.<p>I would be interested in knowing how pg estimates the effect of this tweak.