> Curation is also really hard to go as a group activity

It really isn't. You establish a process, a review system and the guidelines, then make people write and share notes. It'll be a bit varied initially, but it solidifies and converges a lot quicker than you think.

There are hundreds of examples out in the world of all of these things working properly, everything from galleries to second-hand stores have things like this "implemented" already, take inspiration from them :)