Thinking about this some more. The more I think about rebalancing the author/curator split, the more I like it. First, maybe reversing it to 25/75 isn't the exact right split either, but experimenting with the distribution seems likely to be useful. It's a near certainty that they didn't happen to get the exact optimal solution on the first try. Second, I wonder if it could be set up so that authors could set their own split on each post (along with a suggested value)?
For example, if I'm a new author, maybe I want to give 95% to curators to get my name on the board. After all, 5% of something is better than 100% of 0. But if I'm already established, I might want to keep more like 75% for myself.