I agree that trending is stupid and should go. Hot however I think can be valuable.
My problem I guess is the idea of randomizing things. Being a curator on steemit. I see a LOT of trash... Like ....
A LOT
The "new" channel is about as random as it gets and it is pretty painful to go through lol.
I think instead of removing "trending or hot" being able to rearrange posts based on certain criteria might be nice.
You have a very good point, pure Random is probably not the way to go. I experience exactly the same as you when manually curating, a LOT of SH*T. Maybe we shall add some kind of 'quality' rating system. Not sure how that would look like, need to think about it.
I think it would be interesting to filter content based on REP. Like categories...
< 24
25-40
41-50
51-60
61-70
71 <