The guide is a recollection of how the forgefriends manifesto was applied by community members since the beginning of the project, with links to facilitate fact checking. I’m curious about what makes you think it is theoretical because it should be the opposite.
There is a clear distinction between the lack of structure and the lack of hierarchy. The forgefriends community has no hierarchy, by design. But it has a structure, defined by the manifesto. The organizations that are the subject of the article did not have such a structure.
I’m not sure it compares. A this point in time if forgefriends was a project with a hierarchy and a governance similar to most Free Software projects, I think the dynamic would likely be the same. Because that’s typical of new organizations: there are very few people and often one or two do most of the work.