[distantparts]

There is supposed to be a softer Panda algorithm coming soon (Matt Cutts announced it in March 2014 - http://searchengineland.com/google-working-softer-gentler-pa...). Maybe that will help?

Google definitely caused a lot of collateral damage with Panda, especially to large sites with user generated content. And unlike algorithms that target aggressive use of links or ads, it's still very unclear how to fix a site that's been hit by Panda (I should know, my car review site was hit by Panda, and never really recovered, despite 2 years of improvement work).

Now that content farms are not such a pressing problem, Google should be able to dial things back a bit, so that good sites like Metafilter aren't ranked lower than they otherwise would be.