For example: in order to reduce the "same old faces" on the trending page, I've reduced the voting weight of my auto-votes/curation-trails.
That's a good move, me thinks, on your end. With the various curation projects and communities in top gear, I believe that more good contents will fight to the trending page. Over time, we might need to work more on the content discovery mechanism. But in the interim, we are fine. Hive is Alive. Cheer!