Everything substantial that TC reports is also reported elsewhere -- sometimes before TC, sometimes just after TC. It could be salutary for HN if people prefer submitting alternate sources for the same stories (either because of a ban or without one). The bad stories wouldn't get an automatic TC bounce, while the good stories would still rise on their own merits. (The distracting and controversial part of the signal that is 'TC' would be filtered out.)

In so doing, there's a chance we could recreate here the original core of TC -- TC as it was in 2005/06, when it reported like a warm and enthusiastic newswire for all startups... before the pursuit of links and clicks led to all the pot-stirring, soap-opera, friends-and-enemies dross that now dominates TC.

It's not so much that there is or isn't a better source of news about startups. It's that the stories from TechCrunch that make it over here and get voted up have a high probability of being linkbait ("X Will Kill Y!") or about some Arrington-induced/centric drama. That they're allowed to persist here goes against the Broken Windows strategy of preventing social decay.

Is banning TC necessarily the best solution? Maybe not, but we don't have another solution available that's doing the job. There might also be some throwing the baby out with the bathwater here, which seriously depends on how much TC is a source of news (for HN, specifically) that can't be had anywhere else. I'm not inclined to say that they are a significant source of such news for HN.

Hacker News.

Different sense of "source." We're the table of contents, not the articles. I meant source in the sense TC is.

Hacker News + Primary Sources > TechCrunch.

TC's stories often are the primary sources, especially for news about new startups.

But isn't much of that because of favor-trading and TC's occasionally-stated threat: "give us an exclusive or we'll cover you less"?

Similarly, one of Arrington's recommendations at the 2008 YC startup school was: if you want good coverage, leak us info so "we remember that down the road".

When there's a choice between two sources for the same story, I'd prefer the one where editorial judgment isn't driven by the constant filling and draining of a favor bank... even if that means using a source that's second-to-report.

Note well: "primary source" doesn't mean "first to report". It means "closest to the event".

Indeed, but I think PG's usage was more informal, to include times when TC is a first/exclusive/main source of new startup info.

(Otherwise, the situations where TC is truly a 'primary source', in the sense meant by a traditional journalist or historian, are not 'often' but rare.)

Ironically, it's the stories where TechCrunch serves as the primary source that seem to cause the most problems. See: Blaine Cook, Last.fm.