Upcoming Member News

EDIT: After reading some of the comments, how about have all new submissions displayed on the top page (thumbnailed) but also have a "popular" section - based on comments or views. This way we can keep the gems alive for longer.

The Member News section contains gems and sometimes the not-so-much-of-a-gem post pushes it off the page. A proposal I have is to introduce a digg type system - have a look at the upcoming section under the Member News.
When you first post something, it goes in the Upcoming pile and shows up as text only on the top page - it will still show as normal in the paginated results in the order that posts are posted.

The only difference is the way its displayed on the top page. When items in "upcoming" get a certain amount of comments, it gets promoted automatically to being a thumbnailed item on the top page under Member News.
Folks spamming their own items with comments will be relieved from duty. A person who is answering other members comments on an item that they posted will not usually be considered spam - should be obvious in the way comments are posted though.

Do you think this is a good idea? If you have a different proposal then let me know. I can implement the above fairly easily in about an hour using selects based on comment count. Anything too advanced will need time and get prioritized against all the other stuff that needs being done (like adding category names to items).
I cant implement voting easily at the moment either.