Sure, although don't see why the 'trending' page should be filled with 'helpful' stuff. It should be filled with 'trending' stuff. You don't see twitter trending tweets about twitters dev team or how they've helped speed up tweet times, you see people's every day lives and loves and adventures. That is inherently what I see as 'valuable'.
But you're right, it's not entirely about suesa, we both agree that the bot situation is a big-ass problem, and as I said, I don't even disagree with this idea, I'm all for it. I just think there should be methods to prevent arbitrary and blanket flags, something more objective than simply 'this post is shit and presumably just for profit based on my opinion'. Perhaps you are right that things over 800 bucks should be only for big projects - perhaps bots can set tiers for such things; registered projects having the highest/unlimited bid limits, everybody else capped at, say, $400.
The problem with flagging is at best it makes a temporary statement. Even all the activism on steemit made haejin's posts go from, at the peak value time, $450 down to about $400 a pop. Flagging is almost nothing more than a symbolic statement at this point until people learn to band together via powerful communities (flag-a-whale being a hopeful example of that)
Yes, I see what you mean, I think the Trending page should be filled with what the community thinks it's valuable. If they consider a post being of quality, they upvote it, if more are doing so, it reaches Trending. But the whole purpose of this platform is lost when people are using bots to get to Trending, 85% of the votes being bought.
As far as I noticed, the big projects don't use bots; they are reaching trending thanks to the support received from the community since they are doing something beneficial for everybody. But yeah, the bots need to set some more limits.
Flag-a-whale was a beautiful movement, and even if it had many people behind it, it's sad that the outcome was not the one desired.
I guess we have to wait and see what happens now. :)