"How do you think this can be improved and what do you say to new users you are on-boarding when they ask you about all the drama that makes it the front trending page upvoted by bid bots and what not while all the remaining goodness gets trampled underneath."
I will answer the second part first about what I say to new users about the trending page/drama. I keep it real! Most I invite know something about crypto and or me, so they know I think crypto is the wild west and basically the Mos Eisley spaceport. Right away I tell em to make sure they look into it themselves. Then I tell em I think the initial distribution was probably half shady and that the early adopters have a massive advantage and basically control what is seen simply because they hold the most coin and that trending page is determined by a few.
I tell them bidbots run rampant and there is lots of drama and infighting over it but no one does anything about it and the main powers like Steemit.inc don't care. I tell em people wage flag wars over it and you can get your account decimated for buying one or if you just piss off the wrong person who has lots of power.
I tell em Trending is mostly junk with a few good posts, same with Hot and that New is usually just a spam fest of cheap low effort crap and half beggars.
I tell them the website lags behind in the effort you would see most companies put into it especially for one so "web centric" but its slowly improving, sometimes. They usually already know I think crypto as a whole is amateur hour and if they don't I tell them that too.
After all that I tell em if you want to put some content out and get a little following for your work while gaining some crypto its a good place for it. I let em know they should interact with other users and just work on their content and enjoy an organic following and not worry about how much others are making. I tell them to follow content/people they like and often the best way to find new content is from people you follow or follow you.
I tell em its a wild wild west crypto experiment that could all go to crap and their effort would be for naught! and that's why its so much damn fun for me and I spend time, money and effort trying to build up my little following on Steemit.
Oh and I tell em to upvote my work like the image of the Steemit Adventure world map I posted here :)
In another post I will discuss my ideas for "improving" what is seen when onboarding, not that I think it matters.