Way back when, they used to send out an email with a kind of prompt for the month. Something like: "data science vs penguins who'd win? How have penguins changed your life? How many penguin facts does it take to change a light bulb."

Nowadays, we get "add alt text" (which is actually often just noise clutter for people with text to speech), no click bait (except they love click bait and AI optimised titles), and "write a story only you can write". As you say, that's not necessarily what gets boosted. As a nominator, I can't get a straight answer about anything, and I'm not allowed to talk about the questions I've asked.

The Curation boost guidelines are similarly useless.