...nothing gets sorted unless a curator does it.

But that's the current situation with Tutorials. Doesn't seem to be a problem there.

The problem with the traditional "type in a category" is that posters can enter new/nonexistent categories, which means either creating a new category for every user who doesn't know how to spell, or dropping their post in an "unfiled" category anyway. Of course, it would be possible to give the poster a pick list of existing categories... but I think this could get unwieldy when the categorization structure is arbitrarily hierarchical.

I also think the concern (if there is one) about overloading the curator group is misplaced. The volume of new postings in Code Catacombs is quite low — only about a dozen over the past two months.

(and clearly wrong, unless the curator gets the author's buy-in on the move)

I certainly agree with this, as a matter of principle. However, I'd offer Tutorials as a counterexample: the Pedagogues have (as far as I know) had free rein to reorganize categories and move tutorials as they see fit. And as far as I know, no tutorial poster has complained...