Here's the truth of what defines a good, quality post that is likely to trend:
Anything a whale upvotes. We don't even care what whale. Any of them.
That is true right now... Imagine we had only one whale..It would be worse...
When steemit grows we will have eventually more whales , more dolphins, more minnows. It will be hard for a whale to dominate the trending page anymore! It's now also difficult since whales have separate opinions,personalities,ideas etc... If we have 1000 dolphins it will not matter anymore what the whales want! As contribution of steems continues decentralization will be a reality very soon and the steem will be way more "democratic"...