Mhh i think getting rid of it may not be the best approach. But I do agree with you that content discovery is one of the biggest thing that limits the value of steem.
I think we probably need a 3rd party app to come up with a better way of discovering content or maybe if someone builds a better algo steem will implement it or merge into steemit.
I think the trending thing is generally a cool thing, since money matters on steem, but it should not be the only way content is discovered.
The problem with it is that 99% of content only has a short shelf live and there is no way anyone will see relevant content to her if it is not new and popular. So this needs to be changed as you suggest.
Fortunately this is just a front thing and not a structural problem.
Yea this post isn't really about fixing all the problems on Steem - it's just that there always seems to be a lot of drama over the trending page, and i think it's a bad thing for new people coming to the site to see first, so just throwing out the idea of getting rid of it for now.
I'm fine with leaving it there but not having it be the first thing people see when coming to steemit.com.