. I feel that daily gems are a type of promotion that is much fairer than promotion, since that way someone must go through content and then vote for himself. In any case, some promotion is needed especially for lost content with value.
well, either that or the "gems list" gets upvoted and the original authors who are linked get the same half they do in the "promoted author" model because the ppl with the curation lists aren't clicking through.
That would be the fairest distribution IMHO, but we have to keep in mind that finding new lost content is hard work, and should be compensated. Promotion is kinda different story like you said in blog.