There's a bit of background information that might answer some of your questions.
The reason that the sequences written by Eliezer Yudkowsky don't feel like the product of a community blog is that they were originally written for Overcoming Bias which was an ordinary blog with a limited set of contributors and only later imported to LessWrong (which was created when those sequences were pretty much finished).
As far as I know, the story behind the sequences is that Eliezer Yudkowsky wanted to write a book about rationality. However, he had some trouble with it so he decided to first write out all the material in the form of blog posts of lower quality than a finished book would have. He is now working on that book and the last public statement about it that I'm aware of is somewhere in this interview.
Also, LessWrong has a wiki that's supposed to contain succint summaries of ideas presented in the articles but I don't know how complete it is.
That helps explain a bit more why they are the way they are. But it suggests to me that they shouldn't play such a prominent role on the site, because they haven't been designed for the purpose they are now being used for.
If this has been discussed before, then I ask for patience, and a point in the right direction.
I have been a lurker on Lesswrong for a while, and have mostly just been reading things, and only commenting occasionally. It wasn't long before I realised that the sequences played a very important role for understanding lots of what goes on here.
I have been trying to read them, but I've been getting very frustrated. Apart from being insanely long, they are not very easy to understand.
Take the first one I came to "The Simple Truth".
It is a very long story, and it is never really explained what the point is. Is it that truth is whatever helps you to survive? If it is, that seems obviously false.
It also took me quite a while to realise that all these posts are written by one person, that struck me as a bit odd for a "community" blog. So couldn't there be some work to improve the sequences, while also making it more of a community effort?
Maybe:
* Some people could rewrite the key ones, and others could vote on them, or suggest changes
* There could be summary posts alongside the sequences listing the key claims
Any other suggestions?