A single strong moderator, or even a team of mods and admins with loosely coherent policies, can work fine. I think the largest community where I've seen this

A single strong moderator, or even a team of mods and admins with loosely coherent policies, can work fine. I think the largest community where I've seen this kind of autocracy go well is Fark -- people are generally reasonable, for whatever reason the trolls do not do as much boundary-pushing and rules-lawyering as on other sites, and it's generally a calm and funny place to hang out. Drew Curtis is just, like, a nice normal person.