No. This conception of "the democracy makes the rules" is what turns sites into inane cat-picture/political-argument factories. Tiny democracies can work as closed systems, but when they're open to people entering/leaving them, every change will precipitate a change in membership to realign the community's interests with the change. This causes a positive feedback loop, where eventually, for example, nobody is left except Apple addicts.

Sites have purposes (otherwise, there would only need to be one website on the Internet, that served everyone's needs equally.) Letting the community decide both what, and who, the community is to be composed of, leads inevitably to every community being composed of "everyone," and having a purpose of "general interest." I, for one, would rather have a place that just has "Hacker News."