A few more instances like that and news.yc might become another reddit. Are there any plans to have better karma scoring system? More merit based and less popularity contest?

What does that have to do with becoming another reddit? It's a good thing if something that gets popular here gets picked up by the larger tech media. It IS a popularity contest -- the question of merit lies in the question "Among WHOM is this item popular"

If smart people in aggregate think this is popular, then it has merit.

The fact that TC and others pick up on things that get popular here validates that there are still smart people hitting the up arrows (to some extent anyway).

Influence is great. I think the fear is that TC commenters might show up. Maybe we could ask Arrington to stop crediting HN with a link when he mines it for stories?