I can understand that the tone of the article is one that you might not want to represent Hacker News, but I think the article subject is on point and worth considering.

I have been fortunate enough to live under a rock and not follow techcrunch at all, until I started reading HN (I'm a recent reddit lurker, and as reddit continues to become digg my clicks seem to be heading elsewhere). The TC articles I've seen in the last few weeks have all been phoned-in armchair architecture drivel and whining about del.icio.us's release schedule (seriously, who cares?)

I think the upmods to the article in question here are specific backlash against TC's quality falling faster than my west coast (USA) home's value. I'd be concerned that downmods would lead to moderation warring, and that would just bring this site one intellectual hop closer to reddit (and thereby digg).