"... remembering the name of everyone interesting works less and less well as the site gets bigger. ..."
I've noticed this as well. I keep a running tally of the frontpage with hacker, points, karma where I can sort the front page to read the top pages by person/karma. A quick scan of the front page shows me almost all are new names, most have karma of <700. Another check is the /news page compared to the leader board.
