I really wouldn't worry about a live data view. I'm still learning twig and how you've integrated it, so that's the main hold up for me. Liquid templating is super simple, including the part where you can make up your own theme variables, so mainly I need to know what variables there are and how you've used them and/or how they can be extended. I can stumble through figuring out twig from there :)

You do want to ship with a couple of "bundled" themes, but honestly, you mainly want to teach people how to customize / grab themes from elsewhere. e.g. take existing theme, copy folder, rename folder, etc.

I'll make my themes (when I get that far) in their own repo -- or see if you want to include some of them in the base repo.

Re: voting. Maybe something like, do a post explaining that I'll port some number of themes. Then, in the comments, I'll post one comment per theme, and people can vote for that comment? Can comments make a ton of money/votes? Or do I need to do one top-level post per suggested theme to port?

Those are mechanics, but that's also the interesting part. Can you run mini Kickstarter / bounty like systems with just what's already available in the steemit.com interface? For instance, I might say that I'll port any theme that "makes" at least $100 -- or something like that.