The author makes a distinction between an online"community" and "society". He posits that trying to maintain a community with individual votes is foolish since

The author makes a distinction between an online"community" and "society". He posits that trying to maintain a community with individual votes is foolish since it makes the votes an "agree/disagree" vs "this is a high quality/low quality". We don't have the technology to do this. It relies on the users to make an effort to accurately rate quality instead of using them a blunt force tools, eg : rating something you don't agree with as "off topic"