The Best Nodes over the past year have XP in the 50s to as high as 90. In the old days, breaking 100 was not unusual.

Indeed. I've kept historical data on best nodes since 2007. As you can see, prior to 2009, even the twentieth best node of the year was 100+ while today the best node never reaches 100. The last centurion was in 2011.

That said, I don't see any dramatic decline in best node scores over the past three years. And I find it encouraging that the recent Re: why does location of function matter? quickly shot up to 61 in only a week or two.

In the good old days, if I had a node in the top nodes of the year, it used to pick up several points per month for pretty much the whole year. Nowadays, it might pick up a point or two for the few months, then tends to stagnate for the rest of the year; for example, The First Ten Perl Monks is now stalled on 90 points and will probably stay there indefinitely (unless the act of mentioning it here "un-stalls" it :).