The premise here is flawed. Its based on the idea that everything we do for fun has to be a game.
Narrative RPs aren't really games. They are strictly social.
You could retitle that article "Why quilting circles are doomed to fail" and it'd show perfectly why it doesn't work
You aren't going to say "Quilting circles fail because granny doesn't want to give up her edge in patches per hour for the good of the quilt"

The flaw in the premise is seeing "mob rule" as the problem. If it is strictly social, then yeh, it's gonna be driven by whatever the group writing it wants it to be driven by. If you and a group of friends don't manage to entertain everybody who ever hangs out or wants to hang out with you, you wouldn't consider that social circle a failure. Some people will drop out of RPs.

If there is any argument for why they fail, its probably because their scope is too big for their members to realize. Five or ten people ain't gonna manage to constantly update a story on time indefinitely. If they manage a year, and some do, then that alone is a major damned success.