Appreciate the comment. I think we would have needed a much better landing page for at least a year now since most users came to Steemit and thought that was it.
But better late then never, even though much of the reward pool is sadly going in the wrong direction.
Feel free to "draw up" something that you have in mind with "map" - Steem Apps is open source simply because it has the goal to bring value for Steem - it's not a commercial project at all. API is being offered free-of-charge to web-apps like state of the dapps etc.
So if you want to get involved, feel free!
Yes it is sad to see where Steemit is going. I believe a system is always going to be gamed, as the universe is a very large game in most respect. As above so below.
We have designed a better system for curating content, but in the mean time I like the Map idea, as that's pretty much what we do!
I will have to look into your API!