but IIRC, it used to be that SilasBarta would hound Alicorn and "follow her around" on the site (by specifically tracking her recent comments) in order to confront her.

Completely and utterly false.

Oh the irony. The last link in the OP specifically discusses exactly this scenario.

While the outcome for a woman targeted by a man like this is poor, the damage done to the group by all the other men staying silent (or outright supporting him) is huge. Really, this isn't even buried in the comments, this is the whole point of the two letters discussed in that link.

I can't speak to whether there are problems of this sort in LW meetups, but right here is our evidence of it here in LW comments.

I understand concerns about censorship, arbitrary moderation, special treatment, etc, but everyone who downvoted Alicorn and upvoted wedrifid here has also sent a message of tacit support for SilasBarta and a very clear message to any other woman here.

From my link above, edited:

Step 1: A creepy dude does creepy, entitled shit and makes women feel unsafe {in LW}

Step 2: The women speak up about it {in LW}

Step 3: It gets written off as “not a big deal” or “he probably didn’t mean it” or “he’s not a bad guy, really.” {...}

Step 4: Everyone is worried about hurting creepy dude’s feelings or making it weird for creepy dude. Better yet, everyone is worried about how the other dudes in the friend group will feel if they are called out for enabling creepy dude. Women are worried that if they push the issue, that the entire friend group will side with creepy dude or that they’ll be blamed for causing “drama.” {...}

Step 5: Creepy dude creeps on with his creepy self. He’s learned that there are no real (i.e. “disapproval & pushback from dudes and dude society”) consequences to his actions. Women feel creeped out and unsafe. Some of them decide to take a firm stand against creeping and not {participate in LW} anymore. {...} Some of the woman decide to just quietly put up with it, because they’ve learned that no one will really side with them and it’s easier to go along than to lose one’s entire community. The whole group works around this missing stair.

The Geek Social Fallacies seem rather apt here, too.

(Edit to fix square bracket use)

I doubt that a rogue moderator would receive express advance approval of abusive actions. If Eliezer says that Alicorn may ban certain comments, then it is not abusive for Alicorn to ban those comments.

If Eliezer's approval makes the action tautologically non-abusive then please act as if I substituted a different word that means something along the lines of "detrimental, innapropriate, politically ill advised, deprecated and considered 'naughty' by user:wedrifid". ;)

I would have said "Enforcing End of Thread would seem to be politically ill-advised in this instance".

Well, given Eliezer's recent actions his attitude seems to be that as the supreme rationalist leader of lesswrong he can ignore anyone else's opinion.