if the whole manual curation and rewarding the quality content continues and at the same time kick out the abusers (bid-bot users, abusers that steal content from other users or from the web, end up the circle jerking etc etc) then it will outreach people. How you may be wonder.
Just via word of mouth
The best marketing that will attract the old quality users that left the platform out of frustration as well as new ones and it costs 0$
I do agree that will be helpful.
I also think the views of our community are skewed. People who are making a little bit of rewards from something that has almost no value elsewhere are mad they aren't earning more. It's odd.