I was a founding moderator of /r/gamernews, which was founded with a seriously different mindset than that of r/gamingnews or r/gaming. When we started, we had a lot of people coming from the other communities trying to force in memes, rumors, blogspam, and other things that were against our founding principles. It took a few months before the submitted content matched the community we were looking for. Trolls realized they weren't welcome, and people who wanted news without rumors or other cruft felt comfortable there. If we didn't have heavy handed (and often controversial) moderation policies for the first few months, we never would have hit 100 subscribers, let alone 90,000.

Relying on a community to police itself is great for an open community (like /r/gaming), but if you want any kind of formal structure you need some moderation. Especially on such a sensitive subreddit as /r/twoxchromosomes where the potential for abuse, spam, and general hatred is so high. Although with that community, I seriously have to wonder why reddit would want it to be a default, or why the moderators agreed. Terrible, terrible decision to take a community of respect and trust and open the floodgates to the greater internet full of assholes and trolls. Oh well.

Voting in an open system only works to reenforce the viewpoints of the majority of voters, not the viewpoints of the specific community. That's why I can't vote in the elections of another country.