We could just ditch the trending and hot pages. Then people would have to sift through all the spam to get to the good stuff. That included those who want to game the system.
And keep the new posts page. Then we know where to find fresh content.
There is one other point that @scottsantens made: sometimes it takes more than a week for your post to be discovered. What if your post goes viral on the 8th day?
Most of those who have votes that matter at all are not sifting through anything. They setup their voting bots and make a few comments on their friend's posts.
So, basically, some people are treating, Steemit like a nepotism network, right?
Another question comes to mind then. How can one be objective about quality if they're voting on the work of a friend?
I'm not so sure that Steemit is looking to create that kind of reputation, but if enough people see that happening, they will see automated curation among a network of friends who are just passing the rewards between themselves.
I guess the word that comes to mind is "disappointment".
Thanks for clearing that up for me.