open process for the specialist curators to be elected, using method similar for witnesses. this allows anybody who can convince the community they are competent in the speciality to be a curator. So this is a representative system and it separates upvoting decision from the value of accounts. Assuming we can get X amount of voting power allocated for a category, then which posts gets the share of that is up to the elected curators. There is no dictating that I am proposing, rather the opposite.
Now maybe when there are millions of steemit users, things can be totally freeform, but for now I want to be able to target a specific high value category and then have a proven process that jump starts it. If a category doesnt have whale support, it wont have the big attraction behind it, so the categories that are selected will also need to go through a vetting process. But that I will be able to use the existing methods.
So, the selection of categories: by the community
selection of specialist curators: by the community
selection of posts within a specialist category: by the specialist curators
upvoting: based on MofN approval by the specialist curators
It isnt perfect, but my method is not a bad start. feel free to make improvements