Awesome article, and I highly recommend reading the manifesto [1] mentioned.
Now the article claims that "gods are almost entirely absent from online worlds" – something I severely doubt. Take for instance this message board: is HN completely anarchistic? Not so likely. Is it meritocratically governed? We'd like to think so. Or do "gods" – those who write exist here as well?
When it turns out Spez (Founder and Arch-Wizard of Reddit) has the power to change contents of users' comments on reddit – and exercises this power for his own apparent amusement – is he not a "god in an online world"?
When I read Lorry's manifesto, about the hierarchies of essentially mods on his MUD, its difficult not to think of all the mods, supermods and admins on message boards large and small across the Internet.