Yes, I think you're right about newbies leaving. I don't think it's dolphins and whales. But they are the ones powering down. I'd like to know why. I know @jerrybanfield posted a while back that he was going to power down and continue powering down until the flagging policy was changed. But that's just one guy. I wonder if he's influenced others to do the same. Is there some source somewhere that tells us who is powering down? But the bigger question, for me, is why?

I get your point on the trending posts. I've heard it before. I don't look at trending posts too much because I'm more interesting in finding new awesome content, but it would be annoying to look at trending posts and see poor quality posts upvoted by bidbots. I think that's a common complaint.