Leadership is not the essential purpose of moderation. The purpose is to raise the tone of the debate and make the community adhere to norms. If the active membership is pretty good at adhering to norms, and you just need to take out occasional trash, shadowy moderation works fine. LW has a dedicated core with extremely strong norms, and I suspect that even if Eliezer went into a coma for the next year and the site was completely unmoderated that wouldn't change.