You should mention this at the discussion later again, but my initial worries with it are that it would just end up like the whalevote channel on steemitchat. What happens if the guild volunteers spend a few hours each in a day finding the best content and then for whatever reason, no whale is able to make it to the channel to offer support on that day? A lot of time would have been somewhat wasted if we are not able to reward those posts adequately.

I'd suggest all volunteers to make use of already paid-for curation guilds like Curie, Steem Guild, Steem Trails, and indie curators like @shadowspub. And other guilds / initiatives catering to other stuff, of course. Basically just follow and read from these as they've already spent daily energy preparing a filtered view according to their own missions. So this will be the filter on top of filters.

Yes I think this is an excellent idea that could help us find the cream of the crop a lot quicker. Though, our searches will certainly not be limited to posts that have already been selected by guilds.

Invite limited number of submitters and moderators first to control spam. Up to supporters to decide if the list generated is awesome or not.

We are still not certain if their will be a way for non-guild members to submit entries. It depends on the support we are able to get and the number of volunteers willing to offer an hour or two a week. But, each guild member will have a specific genre, or perhaps two if they are knowledgeable, to wit they will be required to sift out the very best of content on which ever day the commit their time.

While high pageviews and comments are something that could be noteworthy, I personally don't think it's the most important metric in the world. There's no correlation between great content and immediate engagement. Some of the best musicians, philosophers, scientists etc have their works ONLY recognised decades, even centuries after their death lol, simply because people were engaged with other stuff. Also by definition, highly engaged contents already have the attention of others, including whales. Unless the whole point is to generate more immediate engagement.

I get what you're saying but this is an attention economy after all. If we are not rewarding posts that successfully get a lot of attention then what is the point really?

Btw, just to mess with you - this should've been denied payment to truly "lead by example" lol

You're not wrong. That was my intent before writing it but after revising it, it slipped my mind. I was going to come back and edit it to explain this but, I thought it would just look like bullshit so I didn't bother. I spoke to @stellabelle about it last night and said that whatever payout becomes available from this post will go towards a bounty to come up for a name for the guild.

I think I have thought of a winner already, but I won't know for sure until I discuss with you guys later and share it.

If so, then the generated payout can go towards a logo creating bounty. I have the skills to do it myself, but I feel we could get a much better one if we offer a bounty to the community.