I think the authors point about history is a key element of this. If I can track how the community has evolved and changed, I can still identify that community in its current form as the sum of all its changes.
I’m not sure that holds true if an outside entity tries to dismantle and rebuild the existing community without the context of the history.
But I also enjoy interacting with other people. It just takes the right 'community' to draw me out of my shell. There have been periods of my life when I was outgoing, because I was in the right environment (college, certain jobs, sports, etc.). Other periods allowed me to retreat into my own isolated world.
There just isn't a magic formula that produces the right kind of community that we want on demand.
But frankly it's best for everyone, the isolated computer age has made in person get togethers have friction when they historically have had zero friction and were just things we did along the way.
This is part of why I love going to NYC, as long as you understand and respect the local rules it's an incredibly positive, effortless social area, so much pleasant casual interaction.
Everything has to evolve to progress. We can’t just say protect community at all cost because it also means you must prevent expansion and improvement of the status quo of other quality of life metrics.
The same is true of individual humans. And yet, that is not a great argument for killing them.
Attempts to "preserve" a community, both online and offline, tend to end up preserving unhealthy power dynamics within the community as well, which would have been slowly replaced with something else if you had just let the community evolve (or disappear) naturally.
Often, members of the community who benefit from the status quo are the ones who cry the loudest for such preservation.