Yes I agree. I've found that the reddit system has a lot better chance of bubbling up interesting articles irrespective of who submitted it.

Unfortunately, from my experience, HN has become a bit of an echo chamber in the sense that certain posters have a lot better chance of having their articles noticed than the majority; irrespective of the relative value of the individual articles.

I don't have data to support; but with the current system it feels like HN is increasingly pushing users into two extremes - new users (who have an extremely difficult time of getting anything noticed) and longterm posters (those who whatever they post gets noticed and promoted). Long-term this is not conducive to a healthy, growing community.