[luser001]

Maybe people notice that techcrunch articles get upvoted. Hence they submit TC articles (to get karma. humans love to have more than their fellow of anything: green beans, salt rocks, pieces of paper etc).

This can be addressed in two ways:

1) Randomly allow a subset of users to upvote article (like slashdot's moderation system).

2) Cap karma from articles.

Sorry if I'm massively mistaken and people don't get karma from article submissions.

[jaredsohn]

People do get karma from article submissions.

Several ideas related to limiting the influence of article submissions were made here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3842554

[cpeterso]

I also wonder if people repost a different article/URL for the same news story, hoping their post will be the one to get upvoted.

[rhizome]

You'd think so, but if you look at both the comments and submissions of "sdtransfer," the poster of this article, they don't seem like they'd be terribly hope-y.