I saw the review queue blow out by about 20 extra items today. As I worked through the "new user's answer to an old question" I noticed that the posts themselves were quite old, for example:
Notice that this "new user's answer" is 8 months old! This is a bit late, is it not, to: "Watch for hidden gems, non-answers, and spam".
That should have been done in January!
(edit)
This seems relevant: Can we raise the bar for reputation for late answers to bypass the review queue?
