The person who hosts this product is still king, he just now gets to wield power via proxy. This seems to be a closed source application as well with single corporate ownership?<p>The idea that mob-rule, a popularity contest, is significantly better than motivated, educated moderators is nonsense. Unless you gate the communities with "proof of worth" any number of random people can flood into any community and hijack it, no matter how specialized it intends to be. IF you allow 'proof of worth' -- then you just shifted the moderation to whomever decides if that person is worthy to be in this group.<p>You could try to make a plurality of existing members accept all new members, but then the system would degenerate into just constant voting on new membership issues.<p>Web Monarchies might be a bad idea, but this one is worse.