@oddnugget, I think you have got an amazing idea here. Making curation accounts for specific topics is one of the sure ways for great posts to get noticed and praised. Even if the payout were not great to start with, it will still encourage people to continue posting great contents.
Eventually these "hodgepodge of random crap: mostly girls globetrotting around, charity pleas, and nerdy crypto crap" as @jacobt smartly named it will have their own space and will not prevent everything else from appearing under the detection radar.
Thanks for sharing the idea :)