I find myself rarely visiting the trending page. It normally is the same whales on the trending page, with the exception of a few really good #introduceyourself posts. I agree that a lot of the people on the trending page buy upvotes from smartsteem, steembottracker, etc. I think there really would be no harm in taking it down. Maybe replace it with a trending page that has an algorithm that shares promising minnow content. Thanks for posting this, it lets us steemians have productive conversations about things like this that can improve steemit and make it a better place!