This is Eliezer's baby... but making the second question about him kind of screams "cult!" Objections to changing it?
Wholeheartedly agree. I doubt most people would care who he is upon encountering the site, though it should be somewhere on the FAQ, if only because his karma is so high my first hypothesis would be that he's a bot that's learned to game the system.
Less Wrong is extremely intimidating to newcomers and as pointed out by Academian something that would help is a document in FAQ form intended for newcomers. Later we can decide how to best deliver that document to new Less Wrongers, but for now we can edit the existing (narrow) FAQ to make the site less scary and the standards more evident.
Go ahead and make bold edits to the FAQ wiki page or use this post to discuss possible FAQs and answers in agonizing detail.