@baobrain pretty much covered it. I would add the prior owners of Ars were accessible and fostered a sense of community. They would participate in the forums an

@baobrain pretty much covered it. I would add the prior owners of Ars were accessible and fostered a sense of community. They would participate in the forums and were happy to help answer anybody's questions. And their style of reporting, they really took their topics to heart and didn't think twice about writing 20+ page monster articles if the topic demanded it. And truth. They reported truth, not opinion, which seems to be the site's mainstay at this point. The content-mill sort of ethic is also new. There are still a couple of authors there who embody the spirit of the old guard, Sean Gallagher and Lee Hutchinson, but they seem increasingly to be marginalized. Their bylines appearing less frequently, and I'm perceiving limitations being imposed on their word counts. Oh and this is my favorite part. I was dressed down (aka censored) by one of the site admins for calling one of their authors out in comments for basing a story on provable, industry-sourced junk science. In the old days instead of being threatened in secret and told to STFU, one of the admins would have linked my comment to a forum post, where the community would hash it out.