I'm not sure moderation is that much better. Some moderators strive to be fair but the majority will still vote and moderate based on preferences. There's also the quantity issue, most low-value comments don't break any rules but also aren't very insightful.
It really depends on the community. You can certainly have rules against low-value or one-sentence comments. Here on HN you can get banned if you post too many low-value comments, it doesn’t need voting for that.
I haven’t seen the lack of voting to be a major problem in newsgroups or traditional web forums. But I’ve come to despise the prevalent dynamics of liking/voting in newer platforms.
