This said, however, at the time when I joined Less Wrong, my model of the site was something like, "a place where smart people hold well-reasoned discussions on a wide range of interesting topics" (*). TheOtherDave's comment, in conjunction with yours, paints a different picture of what you'd like Less Wrong to be; let's call it Less Wrong 2.0. It's something akin to, "a place where Eliezer and a few of his real-life friends give lectures on topics they think are important, with Q&A afterwards".

No; you're conflating "Eliezer considers he should have the last word on moderation policy" and "Eliezer considers LessWrong's content should be mostly about what he has to say".

The changes of policy Eliezer is pushing have no effect on the "main" content of the site, i.e. posts that are well-received, and upvoted. The only disagreement seems to be about sprawling threads and reactions to problem users. I don't know where you're getting "Eliezer and a few of his real-life friends give lectures on topics they think are important" out of that, it's not as if Eliezer has been posting many "lectures" recently.