Great thorough reply! Users like yourself have a good grasp on what is needed for the community to grow. Communities of users like Curie are already doing what is necessary to push the content that should be the face of our authors to the forefront. All we need is a consensus from the dev team that lets the work already being done do more to be the face of Steemit for the new user than the "trending" page and welcome spambots.
Personally I think that the "promoted" page is dead. I understand that it was envisioned to be a way to take Steem dollars out of circulation, but I don't think it is doing an effective job of that. I would like to see a way for that feature to get replaced by a curation channel. This might require some sort of "centralized" effort that might offend some of the purists, but I think this will end up being necessary for the good of the community at large.