RE: Idea on Improving the Trending Feed
Wow a very long and very documented blog and have to admit that your formula will be much better for us the minnows even there are a lot of technical stuff that you explain.
The road to success here on Steemit is a hard one and requires not only good, original and quality content but as you mention a bit of luck as well. Sometimes even me i work so many hours for a post that receives few cents and sometimes i am lucky and few whales notice the blog like it and vote it and makes such a big difference.
I have notice as well the same on the trending page or on the hot page and i have to agree that things need to change there.
But there is one thing that i notice... the better your reputation is the more support you start to have and i think its not ok as i sow posts from people with reputation level over 70 that honest to be were not a good or quite original content and still were voted massively and generate a lot of votes.
It is what it is... maybe things will change in the future!
As always a great blog from your side and i hope more like this will come.. keep up the good work and always Steem On my dear friend!
I don't have the data, but I would assume anyone who is higher than Rep 60 is also probably a dolphin or a whale. And there is probably a correlation between them being about to upvote their post with an initial amount in the $10 - $100 - $1000 range that drove more people to upvote their votes and then affecting their reputation.
A self feeding system. Pay in, you can vote up your post high and everyone will want a piece of the curation reward. In turn, you get a higher reputation. High reputation and high reward, gets you up on the trending list.
That's why I think the reward and reputation should be ignored.
Maybe there could be points for the number of comments as well.
For the moment looks like the Reputation Level is very important and looks like it will remain like that. As you mention once you reach that stage you can upvote your post and then so many people will want a piece of that curation reward.
As i mention in the past: Rome was not build in few day and more changes will come in the future in our amazing platform.. let's hope the changes will be for all of us and not only for the big boys here!