Trending: Does It Matter?Can We Fix It?

This will be little different compared to anything I have ever posted. When I am talking about "Trending" , I specifically mean the https://steemit.com/trending/ landing page and with "All Tags". These is where a new steemian, or a casual observer might land. Now, before you start arguing where a new steemian might land please hear me out. I am saying you are correct, there are many other places a new steemian can land, and so can a casual observer. All I am saying, a person "can" land at the front page of Steemit, which is likely its trending page (or he/she can click on the "Trending" button.

So if we agree at least some people see Steemit for the first time at the landing page, then for our own sake it matters. It matters a lot what we see on that page. Personally speaking, I visit "All Tags" quite a lot. I have seen it evolve through time. Before, the latest HF, it was littered with bid-botted posts, Adsactly's wikipedia knock-offs and whole bunch of other junk. Anyone who saw them, used to get so repulsive that they never saw it again.

After the latest HF in August 2019, for the first time after a long time, it become meaningful to look at Trending again. There were a variety of post begin to appear there, as it should be. It was such an welcome change for both existing and new users alike!

Then, there were two projects, both good projects, burnposts and SBD Potatoes, and their posts begins to appear a lot on trending. I must say, that they are both good initiatives for the steem economy, but those posts were devoid of any content. If anyone reading this is not familiar with those project, you can look them up. They are not particularly difficult to find (that is the problem actually). Since "Trending" is directly proportional to amount of up-vote a post received and those two projects initially received a lot of up-votes, and were uncapped, they will always be on trending. That does make our landing page look unappealing for both new and existing users.

That leads to the question "Can we fix it?" Yes, we can! And we did. Somewhat.... its a work in progress. A few of us talked about it say 3-4 weeks back, and thought well; we can complain about it, or we can do something about it. We decided to do the second. Actually its @joshman's brain wave, I just support the initiative along with many others with somewhat substantial stake in this DPOS blockchain.

There is nothing to join. Nothing to do for the general public. Just enjoy the better looking landing page. I am thankful to the project managers for both burnpost and sbd potatoes for being patient and listening to me. They have both actively suggested initiatives so that both of those posts are fewer and hopefully does not trend as much.

At the same time @joshman spearheaded in finding visually stunning content that has length, breadth and depth. With the help of manual voting from large stakeholders those stunning posts were boosted them into trending. It was as simple as that. The result is the "trending" page screenshot that I took at 2PM GMT on Jan30, 2020.

I don't know about you, but I am quite satisfied with this. I like to thank everyone who supported this.

PS. Please note; that I didn't put any project link or people's name, as it is not really needed. This is a voluntary effort and self-sustained. You don't really have to do anything. Just do your own thing and generate quality content for us to consume. No debate is needed on what is "quality". As that is not the purpose of this effort.