Firstly, great post, Upvoted.
Secondly, thanks for the heads up on Project Curie. Definitely something I can support.
Also, I've been doing quite a bit of work for @steemcleaners recently and can tell you, the articles that never come up as plagiarised are the ones with a lot of personal touch. I think the personal touch is something the community as a whole should reward and encourage; selfies, videos, unique writing styles, and authors who focus on a narrow range of subjects that interest them.
The other point of course, is the presence of vote-betting, which a lot of people are criticising, and I wrote about here.
Most of us are guilty of voting on "sure shots" that we are confident will become popular. The incentive to do this should ideally be fixed, somehow.
It is, by competition. Not everyone can vote for a sure shot, and there can't be that many sure shots, so the more people are looking for them the harder they are to find (and profitably upvote). As long as they are easy to find that means the "mining difficulty" is low and mining is profitable. Do more of it.
Gret point right here: as the trending page turns more varied and unexpected so will the "sure shots' probability go down.
i completely agree with your sure-shots observation, we have too many sureshots as it is right now. And thank you for voting on my article and the comment. It means a lot to me.