The notion that human curation is intrinsically better than algorithmic ranking is a Silicon Valley trend I don't feel is accurate, but that's a topic for another rant thread. (In general, I think the new semimanual approach Hacker News has been doing is an interesting idea)
It's not semi. That's the core reason why Lamer News had no chance of success, even if their broken software had worked.
It's odd that it's a controversial idea. The best Reddit communities are those that are heavily moderated.
To admit this is to admit that some people have better taste than others. Maybe that's the controversial bit. But it's the cornerstone of any new successful community. You see it pervasively everywhere you look, from SO to Reddit to HN.
The only automatic part seems to be the shape of a post's falloff curve. But the falloff shape is probably selected from a list of shapes by a person.
That's the current state. We do still send repost invites occasionally, but mostly not, because users made it clear they don't like the duplicates.
I don't think the human phase can be automated. Instead, our plan is to open it to the community, so it isn't just us and selected users picking stories. The challenge is to design a mechanism for that which doesn't just reduce to an upvoting system (since as the knight in Monty Python says about the grail, we've already got one it's very nice).
We'll also probably publish the list of stories selected in this way, whether or not they end up getting traction, because if nothing else it's alternate reading material.