I suspect that HN is significantly less deterministic than other sites as to what content escapes New. I believe that a good content aggregator (HN, Reddit, Digg, etc) should be able to promote a given piece of quality content with a high degree of reliability. Some sites are better at this then others. My impression is that HN is less good. I would consider that a fault.
Obviously I don't have any hard evidence to anything I just said. Which is why I used words such as suspect, believe, and impression.
There is always going to be some variability. All content kneels before RNGesus. But some really good content never gets past two upvotes. Two! That could be a lot better. In my opinion.
