That was an interesting read, post and comments. When manual curation is brought up it seems that people only think of the big accounts. I am by no means a big account. I am hoping one day to be thought of as a big account but that day is far into the future. Being not a big account I don't need to worry about how much I reward a post, I have a long way to go before I ever hit the double digits above the decimal point. right now may on a good day $0.018 vote worth. That make manual curation for me easy. 20-25 votes a day, some time more if I am doing a 25% vote run. Big accounts have a bigger problem, they need to find a lot of things to vote on.
Vote trails and bots can be a little bit iffy when it comes to finding manually curated post. Even as a small account some post I vote on just to support the Author, and may or may not have read the post, it could be a shit post for all I know, but I do look and see if not that particular post at least every other day to make sure they did not go to hell in a hand basket and start taking the easy street to money lane.
I offer to any who want a few post that I feel are quality to take a look at my comments tab. If I left a comment, that means I found something worth my time. Following who I vote for is a wasted effort, following who someone else voted for is a wasted effort. Curation is supposed to be about things the user found useful, meaningful or enjoyable.
Talk to Asher @abh12345, he is good with steem data. Have him set up a comment trail from his curation league. This comment curation trail would show post that were commented on in the course of the last three days,with multiple comments and positive votes, not negative ones. This would indicate post that people thought were worthy of votes and comments, so above the average vote only recipient. This gives people a chance to find comment and vote on things they liked. Three days later use that list to go and reward the post authors.
One down side would be that a lot of popular authors as you noted above would be on that list, but there would also be smaller accounts on that list. Manual curation does not need to be an individual account looking for and finding everything on their own, this comment curation trail idea I think could work for some of those large SP holders that want to help grow playing field and not shrink it down into a small lump of coal.