Why not have everyone post to a single queue.

The point of the current setup is that it doesn't need editors - what would be editorial decisions are crowd-sourced to upvoting and downvoting.

Incidentally, "have everyone post to a single queue" and "editorial decisions are crowd-sourced" aren't mutually exclusive. Kuro5hin combines the two: authors submit to a queue where other users vote submissions up or down. Submissions appear on the front page, get posted to a less prominent subsection, or get dumped, depending on the votes.

(This isn't to say LW needs or should use the same system. I'm just noting a possibility.)