A lot of times, quality goes unrecognized even for the brightest authors and most talented artists - until they are dead, or centuries after that. If that can happen to the top artists, novelists, musicians, philosophers etc, imagine how much worse the problem is for above-average or "just good" creator. I've written about this issue here: https://steemit.com/talent/@alexgr/unrecognized-talent-fact-of-life-or-whale-conspiracy

Now compounding the problem is the lack of time. We live in a "fast food" era of content consumption. The content which is timeless or becomes classic, will, in my opinion, find its way by itself - over time. People will bookmark it, link it, etc etc. Then you have stats showing you what old articles are getting accessed a lot - and from there you get a better idea on what has become a "classic" after some time.