Indeed, people are here seeking karma for its own sake. That's the problem.

It's also the reason why every single techcrunch article get submitted here. There was a time where you'd see maybe one TC article a week come through, usually with discussion as to whether it was really worth being here.

Realistically, maybe half a dozen articles per day are high enough quality to even be submitted here. The fact that we're seeing thousands each day is a sign that standards have fallen drastically. Removing the incentive to post things unless they're really good would go a long way toward improving the signal to noise ratio.