You raised some interesting points. For now, the community feature seems to be in testing and is largely unregulated.
When I want to make a post in any community, I just use Steempeak and include the community hivetag in my post and my post shows in the community. This method isn't sustainable of course and like you pointed out, there's no whitelisting method.
Time will tell anyways
RE: How to post in a Steemit Community - for example Project.hope