Dear @noisy, I don't want to sound to negative here but:
- The trending page has never showed true quality content from the perspective of an non-tech 'outsider', who is maybe interested in joining Steemit. For it to be enticing, you would need a good mix of art, photography, music, crypto, charity, technology, news and opinion pieces that appeal to a large crowd. We are a long way from that point, I don't think Steemsports or Vote2ICO would make a big difference to today's reality.
- About draining the reward pool, the only real factor here is the Steem distribution. Nearly all Steem is owned by a few whales, if they upvote a certain account, for whatever reason, it will affect the reward pool.
Vote2ICO is a symptom, but not the problem.
This sounds like:
Someone else broke it, so it will not make a difference if vote2ico will break it even more...
once again.... this is pointing fingers to big whales which according to your are responsible for current trending page. Does it means, that we should allow make it worse?
I am trying to fix/prevent one thing at the time. Sorry that I do not have solution for whole ecosystem right away.
I appreciate your efforts, @noisy, I do. I can certainly see you're only aiming at making Steem better for everyone and I applaud your efforts.
Yes, the whales are responsible for the trending page. Just take a look at the accounts that have upvoted those blog posts (which is the sole reason for trending), those are whale votes. Bought, trailed or manually curated, doesn't matter. With great Steem power comes great Steem responsability.