I'm rather new to the platform, so my newsfeed still functions as a favorites tab. I don't have a whole lot of people who I follow just yet, but I can see how a way to group authors would certainly be helpful. Sometimes I'm interested in just one type of content from the people I follow. If I had a tab or grouping option that would make it much easier to sort through.

As for the manual curation, I'm in complete agreement about reading the things I vote for. While I love votes as much as the next person, I love comments even more. I make a point to leave a comment on every post that I've read all the way through. My vote currently counts for zip, zero, zilch, so I figure the comment kinda makes up for that. :-)