I recommend Streemian over Steemvoter, because Steemvoter uses your key to upvote themselves to trending frequently.
I'm also trying to convince people to curate manually or at least follow a manual curator on Streemian.
I stopped looking at trending, because it triggers me every time.
You are absolutely right about the same material ending up in trending every time. I wonder, what their voters expect to happen; In the end they will have a big share of a worthless asset, if this continues.
I haven't minded, in principle, the use of my upvote to promote steem voter. I'm havent paid yet for my curation experiment and I think it is the least I can do to show some appreciation.
That being said, I need to give steemian a look as well. Not sure what is the best solution for me, but I generally favor simplicity.
You bring up a very good point on trails, I'm following a few and have a few new favorites (e.g. @math-trail) that line up perfectly with my own interests. Very cool idea!
trails ? If they are run by steemtrail, I'm totally against them.