There has been a spur of conversation recently (atleast in my feed...) about the current state of the trending page and those Potato posts... check out 
After the last HF it was all sunshine's and rainbows around here and there was really some decent changes on the trending page with loads of different content and bots going full manual - which they still seem to be! However, having a look at trending today was very sad - how can a post from SBD potato be the most popular post on here, and also the fourth most popular!!!?? It baffles me... Additionally the majority of the posts on trending are related to Steem - not so great for someone looking at Steem as an alternative blogging platform. The reason trending is so important is not much for existing users here but for new and potential users - it is the first thing they see when they visit Steemit.com...
What are our options?
Get rid of trending
Getting rid of trending all together is one option, but if we do this then we have to replaces the front page with something else completely. At the moment I havent seen any suggestions as to what to replace it with. We could possibly replace it with something similar to reddit - more like the "hot" page here - atleast the posts would turnover more quickly and we wouldnt see the same Potato posts for days on end.
Limit individual posts on trending
It could be an option to limit each account to show only one post on trending at any one given time. This would limit us to only seeing one Potato post and one Steem burn post at a time. Alternatively we could only allow one post per account to show on trending for every 7 day period. Again this would give more variety to what we see on trending and could allow under rated bloggers to get on trending.
Trending on a particular topic
Trending could essentially be either randomized by topic - each time a new user visits or refreshes their browser they could be directed to the trending page for say "music" or "travel. This would keep it fresh and interesting for new users and allow them so see some of the unique content on here.
Alternatively for new or logged out users Steemit could ask what you are interested in and then direct you to one of those trending pages...
Just some ideas for now and I would love your thoughts and opinions on this. Its a bit of a mess again and things need changing!