I agree. Not only the feed articles, but also articles in popular tags can be easily ignored, and ended up become under-valued compare to its quality.
I'm working on a project than can discover under-valued articles more easily.
https://sydneyitguy.github.io/understeemed
It only has some basic filter and sorting features at the moment, but it can still produce a good list for a curators.
This looks good, it isn't quite exactly what i was talking about, but I'll try it.