I think the idea of a designated "team" selecting the articles for the trending page is pretty terrible. If @ned or another whale of his level wanted to they could completely control who is on the trending page by just up voting things they like with $150 upvotes. The trending page is good in that if you want to show someone Steemit it's a lot more impressive to see a bunch of posts with $1000 payouts (even if we know it is from bots) than not if you want to get them to sign up.