If I were a website operator, I might do it with custom_json notifications, and a countdown timer in the web page. The "wait around" behavior would still translate to larger audience sizes for authors, and by making the website stickier, it might increase engagement too.

I'm not hung-up on any specific solution, though.

The main point is that there is a variety of ways to inject randomness, so I agree that experimentation would probably be useful.